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

It's not really either/or in my mind.

Vulnerable children were always able to go to school throughout lockdown for safeguarding reasons, and it was probably insisted on for certain children. So with that logic I don't understand why they were allowed to withdraw Sara from school if she was already known to social services. Poor little girl.

Why does it need to be one or the other though? I don’t think abusive families stop abusing if their children survive past one year old.

You haven't answered my question- do you have children?
And yes I agree with pp that I would gladly be observed all day every day if it meant keeping any child safe BUT that is not the issue here- all of these people were already known to the authorities and nothing was done!!!
The system you are suggesting would not help children- following up on the existing concerns is what needs to be done.
But yes more health visitor appointments could be a good thing but mandatory weekly appointments that's insane.

I think it’s incredible that there’s currently no way of keeping track of kids who aren’t registered at a school. Children don’t belong to their parents to do what they like with them, they are people who need protecting and IMO at the very least having an unrelated person check in on them once a year if not in school should be a minimum.

Are you a disgruntled home educator who feels under the microscope after this case?

Don’t we also need a fundamental shift in the mentality of the family courts? Its judges that decide whether children can stay with their families and yet time and again they allow contact/residency with abusive family. Teachers, neighbours even social workers can document concerns and raise flags but they can’t remove children from harm.

Do you have stats to back up that fact? I'm just interested as I couldn't find anything detailing whether SS were involved.

I home educate my dc. The checks are adequate. We have no issues and find the LA very good and very helpful. Most home educators decline the visits though.

The real issue isn’t HE though it’s the fact that time and time again social services are incompetent and negligent. Majority of these poor children who are murdered are known to SS and they just failed to act. Sara was known to SS since birth and HE for a very short time. The real problem is Social services but the spotlight is on home education to distract from the real problem.

Maybe health visitors should be a mandatory service, with regular (weekly? Monthly?) home visits and babies stripped and weighed/examined.

Health visitors aren't currently mandatory but it doesn't look good when people avoid them. They do visit regularly when you have young babies. Do you have any children?

As pp have said most of these cases where KNOWN to the authorities so there should be greater focus on keeping more of an eye on the children who are already at risk rather than the absolute insane idea of WEEKLY health visitor appointments for every parent.

That's just madness. Health visitors are already over worked and under staffed, and the vast majority of parents are loving parents.

Do you understand the sort if legislation that needs to be passed in order to make something mandatory? It means you need to introduce a scale of punitive measures for those who refuse to engage.

No.

Every child murdered by a parent/with parental involvement was already known to CP Social Work. Every single one.

What we are doing doesn't work. Child Protection needs more funding. We need more foster carers for children at risk.

I wonder if the Children's Panel system (Scotland) might be a model. Get lay people (with training) involved. I think social workers get too 'accustomed' to what lay people would regard as abuse. Reality check, perhaps?

So what is the system going to be for parents who refuse to engage with the health visitor? Fines nobody will pay? Arrests? It’s just not workable.

Do we need greater intrusion in to families by the government? It seems to me that many of the children who are murdered by their parents / step parents have already been identified as vulnerable children long before it has escalated to this level of violence.

The authorities could come and check on me and my children all day, every day, if it saved just one child's life.

The leading cause of major trauma in the under twos is non-accidental injury. This has been well known and in the research and trauma data collected for years. There absolutely needs to be better risk assessment tools and stricter monitoring of those who fall into the medium to high risk categories.

I said that on a thread and it got made about racism.

People don't want to pay taxes for more and bigger government. They don't and won't.