Should we accept greater state monitoring of families in order to safeguard children?

I voted YABU, but only because we should be doing both, not picking one over the other.

If we know that children under 1 are most in danger, shouldn't we be focussing on them?

We should be focussing on children under 1 and all children that are at risk of being harmed. Before joining MN I never knew there was such destain for health visitors. I've found that on posts where people don't want to engage with one, the majority of people say don't, refuse their visits, they're not mandatory etc. but Hv perform a huge safeguarding role, and whilst not mandatory, I've never refused one, because I have nothing to hide and want to work with authorities in safeguarding children. A HV will not take your child away because you chose to sleep with them in your room or vice versa.

It isnt just paying for it though, foster care is just one example, foster carers dont want to have children in their home who are going to set fire to it, hurt their own children or grandchildren, hurt their pets, damage their property, go missing so the carer has to be up all hours, smoking in the house, physically attacking the carers or making allegations that they have been hurt by the carers. They dont want to manage soiling or smearing.

Neither do residential care homes manage that, they give notice on children with these behaviours. They feel they cant manage it because of risk to other children in the property, their own staff, their ofsted registration if they're seen to not be managing or keeping the child and property safe.

Thats not necessarily relevant to the case we're talking about but its an example of the pressures on the system that isnt necessarily solved by money per se

This. Sara being taken out if school would have been a massive red flag and IF the existing rules and laws already in place had been followed the child would have been rescued. Not to mention all the neighbours who heard screaming on multiple occasions and did nothing.

They don't even turn up when they say they will never mind rocking up to people's houses unannounced. And they can't force entry lol

No...
We need to make sure the systems we already have in place are being followed. There isn't enough funding or staff.. that's the issue.. not that there isn't enough laws or enough supposed intervention.
It's just not happening as it should because social services have bee woefully underfunded

It annoys me that the finger is being pointed at the Home Education community. It's being used as an excuse to force kids into school.

The school and Home Ed didn't fail this poor little girl, it was a lack of funding for Social Services.

The Scottish government tried to introduce this with the Named Person scheme a few years ago and once the ramifications of the intrusion on privacy and family life became apparent there was enormous and widespread opposition in Scotland along with court cases and they had to back down.

monitoring law abiding families only removes resources from those who need it.

And yet the money is available to private landlords to rent properties for private agencies to look after children within.
Without being too outing, we live near the “life Project” on the Wirral. They were renting one of my houses out for four times the market rate and I was assured if there was so much as a scratch on the property it would be repaired to a high standard afterwards.
This was on a three month rolling Contract. £6,000 a month.

And then there was the person living in the house with the child salary on top. They had no bills food or entertainment to pay for out of their wages that was all covered.
And two members of staff have been convicted of assault of SEN children I believe.

What a fine example of the profession

It seems like tragic failure on the part of the school and social services. The priority should be addressing why these systems failed so terribly.

Absolutely not.

but we do need greater investment in child services. The failures are due to them being over worked and under resourced.

I'd gladly accept more monitoring if it protected abused children, but it couldn't work in the current system. Social care is on its knees as it is. There is neither enough money or resources.

Sara was known to be at serious risk. Her father was known to have a record of abusing children. The school and social services were well aware of these facts. Yet, there appears to have been nobody tasked with monitoring/ checking on her even when she was taken out of school. I was listening to Tom Swarbrick duscussing this at length on LBC and these points were all raised. All the legislation and systems are already in place but none of it was followed. One awful point raised in court was the fact that the child was made to wear a hijab to hide the injuries. She was 10. No other female in the family wore one. Why did nobody think that was odd? Why is it sensible for the government to give SS the extra work of increasing monitoring of more families when local councils can't or won't pay for safeguarding teams to intervene with the children known to be at serious risk?

I was talking to my DSis yesterday about our past jobs. We both worked in education. We both undertook extensive and regular training after Victoria Climbie.

And here we are. More children dying at the hands of people who should care for them the most.

The whole system needs a complete overhaul.

The plans for monitoring Home Ed children are woefully inadequate. Concentrating on children who are already on child protection plans is a safety net that isn't big enough.

Home Ed needs rigorous monitoring. All dc involved in Home Ed should be regularly seen by a local support worker.

We need to train and retain a generation of social workers. Start actually supporting social workers rather than demonise them.

We need to confront the fact that a common denominator in so many abuse cases is the introduction of a new adult into the life of a young child.

And stop saying "lessons will be learned" and actually get on with protecting children.

Children in nursery and school are monitored. We already have our lives 'watched over'. If my child has a bruise when I drop her off at nursery I have to fill in a form to say what happened. So to say this is unfair scrutiny of home ed parents feels ridiculous. Why the secrecy? What is the problem with some oversight? If it saves some children being harmed, or not getting any education then it's worth it.

Just to add, I have met kids in care that have been treated so badly by the care system I couldn't help but feel that they'd have been better kept at home with their parents.

The majority of kids in the Uk who are removed from parents, are removed because of neglect. A large percentage of neglect cases are massively underpinned by poverty. Addressing that poverty directly would actually be cheaper in the long run than bringing children into care. But that unfortunately is not a vote winner.

we don’t have effective ways of dealing with it.

In fairness services do an incredible job with the resources available. From teachers and schools supporting very vulnerable families, nurseries offering a range of support to struggling parents, social workers doing 50/60 hour weeks to get children through the legal maze that is child protection. Many, many children are alive and have measurably better lives through the efforts of professionals working well beyond their remit.

Adding in more monitoring without allocating resources to deal with what they might find is an utter waste of time. Properly resourced funding for children who go unseen is definitely worthwhile.

After every case like this, the number of children taken into care goes up. For some it will be the right decision, but for others it will be a "better safe than sorry" exercise because of the lack of resources and the bureaucracy of allocation. There will be a recruitment campaign for foster carers, and every professional dealing with children will be on high alert, partly in the best interests of children, partly as an arse covering exercise.

Right now I do think the home schooling aspect is being over-egged but to be blunt it's a crowd pleaser, it selects a group of people that are different from the majority and gives people a sense that "something will be done".

The main drivers of child abuse and neglect are poverty and addiction, which are rarely properly addressed at state level. Yes, there are depraved psychopaths out there, but as can be seen, they manage to fly under the radar regardless of systems, processes and oversight - although in the case that is prompting the current threads, it's blatantly obvious it's a whole series of system failures with home education being a red herring, and allowing certain agencies and the judiciary off the hook.

Most families have plenty of oversight in a child's early years, and most families are not abusive. Losing the SureStart initiative has been mentioned as a turning point in declining outcomes for vulnerable children.

I don't think that assuming all children are always at risk and treating families accordingly will identify those genuinely abused, and will further erode what little trust there is in the authorities.

There are posts regularly on here with parents at their wits end appealing for help when things are going wrong, and they describe being passed like a hot potato from one agency to another while risks do increase. See also the education system and all the bureaucracy involved when trying to get SEND children into school, leaving many parents feeling home education is the only option.

No matter which way we slice it, the breakdown of families and communities is being accelerated by the pressures of modern life and financial deprivation, and children suffer in a myriad of ways.

Increasing monitoring without addressing the issues contributing to the reasons why children are being harmed is like sticking a band aid on an arterial spurt.

But this is why all of this “who should we monitor” is not the issue.

There is no doubt about where the vulnerable children are - but when they are identified, we don’t have effective ways of dealing with it.

I totally agree.

It's easy to say what should happen. Paying for it is a whole other problem.

@Scarydinosaurs i agree but all of that costs money. Resourcing social work so that workers carry a realistic case load, they have access to a range of interventions for families, have adequate supervision so they don’t burn out and leave after 6 years in the job, gain the depth of experience needed for really complex situations all costs money.

Paying foster carers a professional salary so the role is attractive, training them to parent deeply traumatised children, monitoring carers to ensure they offer a high standard of care.

Fully assessing kinship carers, providing them with the financial resources and training needed to care for very traumatised children.

Providing adequate income for vulnerable single parents so they can secure adequate housing and feed their kids without resorting to moving some loser bloke in to help pay the bills.

It all costs money and, as much as we mourn these children, no one wants to pay.

Social services need to be able to do more things to support those children in abusive homes.

we need a better fostering system.

we need places for these children to go to.

we need support for those children who have been abused.

Finding them isn’t the problem - we know where they are. It’s doing something about it.

I wasn’t casting any aspersions on home educators just saying that the state should keep track of kids

I suggest that the most important thing is to ensure that child protection services whoever they are are properly resourced, trained and given a clear mandate

But how would that have helped Sara?They were so many reported concerns, and nothing was ever done. She would never have died if a judge hadn't given her back to an already known abusive man. That is the real scandal here and the home education register stuff is just a massive deflection from serious failings in the social services and family courts.