A STRONG CARD IN BLAIR'S RESHUFFLE

It is also to be welcomed because Margaret Hodge has a strong track record on disengagement and exclusion. Before she joined the Government, she was the chair of the House of Commons Education Committee, which, in 1998, produced its report on Disaffected Children. Despite the awful title, the report contained a powerful analysis of the vulnerability of certain groups of young people and a strong indictment of the failure of services to extend appropriate support. Disaffected Children was an important stalking horse for the Social Exclusion Unit's celebrated Policy Action Team on Young People.

Hodge becomes minister for children (and young people) outside of school, covering the youth service, Connexions, early years, the Sure Start programme, family law, teenage pregnancies, careers and children at risk. With this expanded brief, which takes in responsibilities previously distributed across the Home Office, the Lord Chancellor's Department, and the Department of Health, as well as Education, there is now a sense of coherence in the political administration of children's services. Margaret Hodge will be leading on the green paper on children at risk. She has promised "far reaching reforms" that will engender some panic among professionals. But she has a reputation for gritty determination and a commitment to the improvement of services, despite (still) being tarred with the chaos of Islington, which she oversaw in her former life in local government. We should try to lay those skeletons of a decade ago to rest and celebrate the chance for joined-up activity.