To think that having to have a DBS check to home educate is unfair.

[Grimed]

Baroness Garden is intending all homeschool parents to be DBS checked. I don't think this is fair. What makes Homeschool parents more likely to be abusive? Surely regular checks from the local LA should be enough? If the education system is failing so many children perhaps that is what's needs examining not parents. What's next? All pregnant women get DBS checked?

Working in school we have safeguarding training regularly just this morning a little girl has died at the hands of parents who have taken her out of school to cover over the constant abuse she had received by 3 adults in her family I think if you are going to take on the responsibility of education for your child you should have all the same checks we do in school to be able to work there DBS checks are good as it checks police records but it only means you have no record or haven't been caught but I do think parents need a to do safeguarding training .we will go into school on January and do a whole school safeguarding .if you have nothing to hide it shouldn't be a thing to worry about .

As a parent you typically have midwife and health visitor check ins so there is some contact. And you may well be on social services radar if you have a history of abuse and then go on to have a child.

The DBS check is ridiculous for most families but may help a small proportion of families where eg a woman has moved in with an abusive partner unwittingly.

It would be much better for the LA to conduct regular welfare checks than do a DBS. I don't see how this is an infringement on privacy. I think it's a good idea, to check on the welfare of both parents and children.

This. I don't think dbs checks are the way to go but some kind of professional input is a good idea. My now 14 year old didn't go to a pre school setting so we had extra appointments with the health visitor to check his development, which we were grateful for. It was also the schools who encouraged and supported us to seek autism diagnosis for 2 of our children. We had been told when our eldest was a toddler that he didn't have autism so we weren't confident to try again when he was older.

Children at school are seen daily by staff trained in safe guarding. I think home educated children need something. The vast majority of home educating parents are doing an amazing thing for their children but there are some things that happen at school which home educated children miss out on. Someone similar to a health visitor but for home educated school aged children would be helpful I think. Doing vaccinations if needed, providing support for parents if necessary and doing occasional development checks.

But can't you see that abusive parents will, in some cases, be falsely claiming to home educate as a cover for keeping children away from school, and that it might be a good idea to have some basic checks in place? I've been DBS checked for volunteering, so have plenty of people I know. You fill in a form, and someone in an office somewhere does some paperwork with it. It's hardly the Spanish Inquisition!

She was known to Social Services before she was even born. This has nothing to do with her being home educated. She was KNOWN. Social checks could still have been carried out if they had concerns.
As for DBS checks. If HE parents need a DBS check, then all parents do, because, guess what, all children spend time away from school with their parents.

Not one child has ever died whilst being home educated that wasn't previously known to Social Services.
Parents who abuse their children are very very unlikely to want them around 24/7.
As someone who was abused their whole childhood - school never picked up on it once, so it didn't help me. And as for the DBS check - it simply means you have never been caught (if guilty), not that you are 100% safe.

Dbs leans u not bon caught or come to attention of police doesn't mean ur safe person

There's was a loophole of her being removed from school as the checks were getting too close to finding them out also in safeguarding it is more risk if the child is an Asian girl due to fgm and long spells away from school unfortunately when you do this training it is alot of very horrible things you learn to look out for she suffered a long line of abuse before this .we log all information unauthorised absence cpoms is used to log and track incidents behaviour conversations observations and marks found neglect change in personality shared between teachers and staff so this is obviously hard to do when a child is not in the safe space of school in this case .
On the news today it was thought with a backlog of services and lack of return to schools after COVID and other cases of schools not meeting the child's requirements and needs such as Sen cases more people have chosen not send their children back to school which is a given right at the minute but I think things need to tighten up unfortunately it's everyone's responsibility when working with vulnerable children like we do in school and lack of communication between services has played a large part again it has alot to do with the way home education is regulated as this has let these people get away with it for so long .i think if you home school that's amazing and hard work but I think it' needs regulating .

If home educators need a dbs then all parents need them. All children spend a large amount of time away from school which means they are all vulnerable. You can’t vilify parents and carers who go down the home education route. Recent news articles are focussing on the home education angle rather than the fact these children are known to social services, they’re known to schools and it’s those professionals that have failed them. It’s easier for government to blame home education though, it fits their narrative.

if you go down the DBS route then all parents should have one. Then it opens up a can of worms, if something flags up does that person get to keep their child, are they allowed to have a child in the first place? DBS just shows known crime, many child abuse cases and come from parents or family with no criminal past as they haven’t been caught.

But again, its lack of communication between services. The child was known and the ‘services’ didn’t act. It’s easier to put the focus on home education though rather than admit failings. You say ‘people get away with it for so long’ which in itself is putting the blame on home education rather than seeing the bigger picture. If a child withdraws from school who is known to social services and known to be at risk at school, why didn’t anyone act quicker? The child wasn’t a hidden child, they were on the radar and always had been. It has nothing to do with the way HE is regulated as the child was already known and failed by school and social services.

Maybe they should.

Oh don't go around with actual facts! It's inconvenience to those hiding behind them.

As an enhanced DBS holder I know it's a totally useless system. There's a huge known loophole (not putting it on here for obvious reasons) that can be intentionally exploited, though the three individuals I know who come up as entirely clean and never convicted of a crime despite having criminal records found themselves there by accident and have kept their mouths shut.

Two have convictions under the single justice procedure, one of whom actually only found out over a year after they where convicted in their absence, one knew at the time and said and said nothing when they realized it hadn't been picked up, one a standard conviction including a suspended sentence.

All three have not informed DBS that they have these convictions that haven't shown up, one is a teacher. Fortunately none of their offenses involve any sort of abuse of children or vulnerable adults, and none of them intentionally did something to prevent their convictions showing up, but for the same reason all three slipped through the checking net and didn't declare it when renewing.

On one occasion my enhanced DBS was initially not renewed and automatically withdrawn because I slipped up by one digit and put an incorrect end date on one of many addresses I've lived at. So the system seems good at checking against what has previously been recorded, but no garuntee to update new information if the holder happens to have a particular set of circumstances, and doesn't tell checking services they've slipped through.

.If anyone thinks having a clean enhanced DBS means that person is garunteed to have never been convicted of a crime they are beyond wrong.

@Short78 Sara, like many children was being observed, monitored, CPOMed, alongside being battered horribly at home, for years while at school.
Read Batool's own messages and awful photos sent to her sister about how battered she was and the issue of school seeing it.

The supposed 'safe space of school' did not protect her from it while she was there, (or many other children in the same position) and chose not to raise it as an escalating concern to SS when she was withdrawn, as there was an initial intention to do so by school, but she was later seen and observed to "look OK."

That has nothing to do with how HE is regulated and everything to do with professionals making choices as to whether to act on the information they already had or not.