With every new year comes new hope, and 2007 is no different!
I - presumably along with many of you - hope for greater equality, greater strides towards the elimination of child poverty, and improved life chances for disadvantaged children. But then we probably wish for that every year, with varying degrees of success.
More specific hopes for this year lie, for me, with asylum-seeking children and children with disabilties.
In December, the Every Disabled Child Matters campaign announced that it already had 10,000 supporters signed up to get rights and justice for disabled children. They have a new target of 25,000 signatures by July 2007, and I am hopeful that not only will they exceed this, but that the politicians and decision-makers will sit up and take notice of all these people and help deliver on the campaign's worthy objectives.
In terms of unaccompaned asylum-seeking children, my optimisim is more tempered. The Home Office is on the verge of announcing its plans for reforming the system that supports this group of vulnerable children - and I am desperately trying to remain positive about the whole thing.
I sincerely hope that fears that the reforms are being shaped by a desire to save money rather than to improve the quality of care for children are unfounded, and that predictions that unaccompanied asylum-seeking children will not benefit fully from the proposals for all other looked-after children set out in Care Matters are wrong.
As a sceptic back in 2006, I had half-expected the Home Office to publish their much-delayed plans on December 24 while many of us were rather distracted with other things. I am happy to report that they did not - and have been assured that an announcement is likely in January.
Perhaps if we collectively cross our fingers we will be pleasantly surprised and find the changes actually amount to the "improvements" they have been billed as. That would certainly help me get off to a Happy New Year!!