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

I just watched the entire sentencing hearing.

I must admit I was slightly surprised that the judge specifically called out the authorities with regard to home schooling. It feels like a bit of an agenda is being pushed here - like virtue signalling with this poor girl’s death.

don’t get me wrong, home schooling was obviously a detrimental factor but I think there’s so many other laws and processes that I would campaign against ahead of homeschooling in this case.

They certainly don't belong to the state. This is so naive, look at the terrible things that have happened to kids in the foster and residential system.

Home educating parents do not believe their children "belong to them to do what they like with them", that's a shitty thing to say. The law in the UK is parents have a duty to see that their child is educated, in school or otherwise, not a duty to send them to school. Do you think your kids "belong to you to do whatever you want with" because you made the decision to send them to school?

Okay what ?

🤣 okay

Its also the ability to maintain that data, update it all the time, enter all the admin needed, SWs need to be out doing direct work and assessments, visits, getting stuck in traffic, attending to emergencies, but at the same time sat at their desks entering all the information, updating and writing plans, writing court reports, answering constant emails and phone calls and text messages and watsapp messages and teams messages and attending court and attending health appointments and filling out referral forms, the list is literally endless. There is no back up to do this and woe betide you if you're out of timescales to put all this on.

Oh and the system isnt working half the time either due to outages.

I home educate but with council supervision through EOTAS. We have a call every week with a very kind man who is a psychotherapist and he helps my DS with medical trauma from his toddler years. It's a great relief to my mind to have a second pair of eyes on our situation. A professional I mean, rather than me just having to manage it all myself.

If all the Home Ed community could access EOTAS provision, none of this would be an issue. The tax budget has about £7.5k every year for the education of each child, and home ed kids are not getting that money.

If they had EOTAS funding to home educate and were just given that bit of money that they should be receiving if they were in school, then they would be able to get much better schooling, and an extra pair of eyes on then. Why are all home ed kids not getting that money? That's what I want to know. Many home ed kids have SEND issues for which there is no suitable school so these kids should be receiving that money and the money would fund the supervision.

Plenty in school too. That's where the vast majority of them will be.

I don’t honestly know what the answer is but the only exposure and experiences I’ve ever had with social services with that they were people who literally couldn’t have got a job anywhere else.
They couldn’t tie their own shoelaces.
I had a section 7 report requested by the court in a custody residency dispute
And the social worker spent more time in my Bathroom commenting on the size of the Bathroom of a rental property than any other aspect of the report. She was an enormous great big fat thing herself and she actually went out of her way to put in the comment section that the mother turned up wearing gym gear carrying a bottle of water.

It was mind blowing how genuinely thick and simple the person was.

I had the most awful trouble with a health visitor when my DS was small. He had a sleep disorder and couldn't sleep unless I stayed with him to make sure he was breathing. I called the health visitor and she came to visit she hadn't read the text I'd sent explaining the problem, so she didn't know about the sleep disorder.

She took one look at us and jumped to conclusions. She said I had to move him to his own separate room to sleep or "there would be consequences". I rushed down to the GP to ask for his help, but both he and the HV were new in the job and they ganged up on me.

I had to move my child to a separate bedroom which was unsafe for him, just to get them off my back. Then I had to go to the chief health visitor in the country to get her help. When I contacted her I didn't even need to tell her the name of the HV - she already knew who the one bad apple was.

She sorted the HV out and then I was able to help my son sleep safely again. I always went for private healthcare after that. In my experience the state services can be so overstretched as to be actually dangerous.

Maybe they should license parenthood so only the right type of people can have children. Oh wait...

They are checked on . We do a review every year with a person from our LA . Mine is a very nice and helpful ex teacher . They fill in a full report . And are available throughout the year for any advice or information.

If they have any worries they report it .
We have home educated our eldest for several years now and never had any problems. We take education very seriously. As do all the other home Ed parents we see and speak too.

But she was among the most desperate.

Why? It's up to the parents to decide how their children should be educated. Home education is the default. If you want your child to go to school you have to "opt in".

The real problem here is the lack of reliable way to access all the date at once - from school, police, SS, etc. As I understand, at the moment each agency has access to their data only, with limited access cross agency. So no one can see the whole picture.

And once you have that data you need someone with the skills and knowledge to analyse that data, understand the risks for each particular child, and to be able to work with the family. Data gathering isn’t child protection, child protection is the plan that is put in place and that isn’t one size fits all.

If you ask professionals it’s not a lack of data - we know the kids that are at risk - it’s the lack of resources which means only the most desperate actually reach the threshold.

She shouldn’t have been living in their care at all.

and let me tell you most social service databases are more than lacking

local authorities all have their own databases, they aren't linked to health, police, schools etc nor at the linked to other local authorities. So if a family moved from one LA to another, their history can be lost.

Parents who are abusive to the point of killing their children will find a way to escape any checks put in place.

The real problem here is the lack of reliable way to access all the date at once - from school, police, SS, etc. As I understand, at the moment each agency has access to their data only, with limited access cross agency. So no one can see the whole picture.

I actually read there was a system developed to create a joint unified database for each child, it was developed for 6 years and then cancelled/ erased by the Coalition Government, with no reasons given and not replaced with anything. Make of it what you will.

Nearly everyone I know who works in childrens services would pinpoint the closing of Sure Start centres as a real turning point in outcomes for children in this country. A ginormous travesty the effects of which are still being felt.

Does anyone know what the resistance is to removing children in cases of established violence like Sara’s? Is it for fear that the alternative like care or fostering is even worse?!

To even get close to removing a child you have to evidence that is no other way to provide safe care. Which means trying to engage the family in various supports and interventions and evidencing the level of risk you have concerns about. That means having access to the child and their parents/carers who can go to all kinds of lengths to avoid actually meeting with social workers. It also means having current evidence of concern, historic concerns won’t meet the threshold without evidence of current risk. There’s a reason they took her out of school.

Processes are often lengthy, frustrating and slow because the court won’t accept that you’re concerned purely because no one has eyes on the child. Oddly enough social workers can’t just walk in and remove a child. And even once you’ve gained all the evidence in the world there’s the distinct possibility the Court or the Hearing (in Scotland) won’t agree to removal.

in my experience it is very very rare for a child not to be removed when a parent has evidently been violent towards a child. The high profile cases we read about might seem very black and white after the fact, but in the moment the facts aren't as forthcoming as they are now. I can assure you there is no reality in which a social worker would have known and been able to evidence that Sara was being violently abused and left her there. None.

In terms of neglect/other forms of abuse its complicated. A child can't be removed without permission from a judge and the threshold is high. There are also an extreme shortage in foster placements and children in care do tend to have worse outcomes than children left within family networks.

Surely, we'd be better off spending money on preventative measures that would benefit everyone, such as better education, more robust mental health support, a solid, workable plan to end child poverty, the re-introduction of services like Sure Start, local libraries, and free toddler groups, and better housing for the vulnerable.

Women who have options via education and proper mental health care tend not to settle with violent men for long.

As someone has said HVs are in crisis as it is. Mandatory checks aren’t going the most effective use of their time.

If you are going to go on the targeted demographic route we need to look at the step parents/ mother’s boyfriend more closely. Why are these woman leaving their under 1s with them in the first place? Is it so they can go work but they can’t afford childcare? Why are they moving in with another man so quickly after having a baby? Is it because it makes more financial sense than living alone as a single mother? Single mothers need more support so they can stand in their own two feet without needing ‘support’ from a partner. Maybe they need more HV visits? Maybe they need more funding to access childcare? Family centres? More opportunities for concerns to be raised? Perhaps an automatic SW referral if a non relative adult is living in the house with an under 2.

It’s just such a terrible case and I dearly hope lessons are actually learned and change happens.

In my opinion, children who are known to social services shouldn’t be allowed to be home schooled.

The thing is whenever a big case like this is in the news we have a few weeks of shock and horror and threads online about how people need to be monitored more, how neighbours etc should always report things etc.

Then it's back to "I don't want a HV visiting because Insert Random Reason" and it's pages of "they're not mandatory, just don't answer the door/phone" and people asking about behaviour they've witnessed or are aware of only to get "mind your own business" "it's only a snapshot, I wouldn't be judging" blah blah blah.

The fact is the services are stretched to breaking point and people don't want to pay to improve things. They also don't want to "get involved " and resent anything that makes them feel"judged" or "anxious " even when it's obviously an innocuous general visit that everyone gets, precisely to try and monitor those families where children would be in danger.