to think home ed families are going to have to accept more oversight?

[DrZaraCarmichael]

To try to prevent more cases like Sara Sharif. Taken out of school - where teachers were raising concerns - and then apparently fell off the radar.

Yes children's services have to look long and hard at themselves but taking a child out of school, especially when there has been previous SS involvement, has to raise a whole field of red flags surely??

I can see how families who are home educating for the right reasons and who have nothing to hide will see this as intrusive and unnecessary. But something has to change, right?

I’d also like to add - should this scrutiny be applied to communities who do not enter the system at all? Should these communities be eyed with suspicion that they are all potentially abusing their children and be mandated to turn up and offer their children up to government scrutiny?

Really? It is not intrusion perhaps if there were more checks less children would die, a lot of home educated have children with sen these children are more at risk of being abused, it's a very high figure and when some of those parents have issues as well it's scary to think that no checks are done.

If there aren't enough social workers to do checks on the children that are already well known to them then not sure who people imagine will be conducting these regular home education checks anyway.

It's well known that families that are on ss radar move from school to school and area to area to escape ss.

I mean it's wasted resources if parents deliberately avoid being at home for arranged appointments. I imagine a lot will (especially if parents are abusing kids) as they don't want to be in the 'system'. Might take a lot of resources to manage to see some of these children.

Exactly. And despite that being pointed out numerous times the thread was still full of anger about the nosying and over stepping

Wouldn't make more sense to focus these extra checks on children already known to social services first?
What percentage of children murdered by their parents are already known to social services? I'd imagine that's far higher than the number who are home educated.

It’s not hyperbole. These children are already well into the system. Have had many many interactions with HCP since they were born. It just doesn’t fit your narrative because your biased against HE kids

What about traveller children? Are you saying all traveller children should be subject to government welfare checks? Many of these kids were born at home, don’t attend school and are don’t exist as far as the government is aware.

The children don't need to know that the visits are anything to do with school especially they have an independent party visiting the house.

Show me the figures that say HE kids are more likely to be abused than school educated kids

Well yes obviously. But how is anyone to know which families are taking their kids out of school to abuse them? People aren't mind readers, you can't just look at a kid and go "oh yeah they'll be find being homeschooled, let's leave them to it for years on end with no check ups" 🙄

She said SEN kids.

I'd take a wild stab in the dark and say maybe the children who are already well known to social services?

I’d say families with a long involvement with social services and who the school recently reported multiple concerns about would be quite obvious cases.

Which is why this case shouldn’t be the trigger point for the HE discussion because it was bloody obvious.

@ElsaGreen How do you know how that poor child felt at school. She obviously didn't feel safe enough with teachers to disclose the abuse to them directly, to say - please help me, people at home are hurting me.

She would have felt safer there than at home because she knew no one at school was going to come at her with a cricket bat or bite her. When she was removed from school she would have been scared all day, every day. That is not the fault of teachers ffs.

I agree that families with social care involvement should be closely monitored. The school should have been able to ring the social worker to say, ‘right, dad has decided to withdraw x and home school-we are hugely concerned about this-over to you’ and then social care should have swept in, gone in to the home and put a something in place.

I’m sure social workers would have a better idea of what that ‘something’ would be than most of us, a package of monitoring visits, a forced school order (that probably doesn’t exist here but it does in some countries), placing the child in care, investigating into signs of abuse etc but that takes manpower.

I’m guessing the problem is there’s not enough social workers, the ones we have are thinly stretched, hugely overworked and bound by masses of red tape. They are probably covering high levels of absence as well, meaning their capacity and continuity is poor.

Obviously a big funding injection is needed, but it’s needed in schools, children centres, children’s homes as well. And the nhs!

A school attendance order can if issued by the LA if it is felt that a child is not receiving a suitable education at home. This is a hard one to prove though.

I’d love to see those figures for SEN kids that are home school against SEN kids in school

Also if a child had SEN then they’ve already been through the system to even get that statement. The LA will already be aware of their needs and if SS involvement is needed.

Again this is a SS problem not a HE problem

Isn't the usual response to this "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear ?". That's usually what's trotted out when increased intrusion into our lives is mentioned. You know - when they want to ban encryption, or snoop on our bank accounts.

I'm a school safeguarding lead. It is not uncommon for parents to suddenly pull their children out of school to Home Educate them when school staff raise concerns about potential abuse or neglect. I've seen it many times over the years, sadly. When this happens we, of course, contact Children's Services and the Home Education Team at the LA, share our concerns and implore them to monitor the family. But ultimately it feels futile because Children's Services can't work with a family without parental consent unless there is strong evidence that the child is at immediate risk of significant harm, and how do you obtain that evidence when no one is seeing the child? The Home Ed team in our area don't even visit, they may speak to the parents on the phone, but it's incredibly easy for these children to slip through the net.

Schools don't always get it right when it comes to safeguarding, but I can think of several children over the years who I genuinely believe would have ended up being the subject of a Serious Case Reviews had it not been for the tenacity, vigilance and care shown by School staff leading to serious abuse being uncovered and children being placed on CP plans and, in some cases, removed. For these children, HE would have been disastrous and potentially fatal. I have also worked with children for whom HE was unquestionably the right decision for their wellbeing, and I absolutely respect parents right to make that choice.

The truth is we have no idea how prevalent abuse or neglect of HE children actually is, because those children are not being monitored. There is an argument for increased monitoring for a period of time purely to determine how widespread the problem is, then we would have a more accurate picture of how much contact/monitoring was actually needed and the kind of support that would be effective.

As a SEND parent myself, HE is something I wouldn't rule out for my own DC should I feel it was in their best interests in the future. In which case I would gladly submit to regular calls, visits and other contacts so that the LA could confirm that my child is safe and well if it means that more vulnerable children are also being monitored. I understand the anxiety of genuine HE parents around this issue but it must be possible to achieve some sort of balance between children HE not being on anyone's radar at all and constant intrusion into thier families lives.

The average budget for a pupil in mainstream schooling was £7,200 in 2023-24. The cost of the odd wasted visit (which in itself could be a red flag) would still be modest by comparison.

Not necessarily. Not all children who are HE due to SEN have an EHCP, in which case there would be no ongoing contact or monitoring by the LA.

You say "it's an SS problem" but how would they become aware that a HE child was at risk of abuse or neglect if that child is not having any contact with anyone outside their home and family?

Yep

For someone who claims to be a safeguarding lead you seem remarkably ignorant on the issues around sacred castes in safeguarding.

Your whataboutery is irrelevant.

Children should be entitled to an education whether in mainstream or at home. In mainstream that education is periodically checked and delivered in a framework of professionally qualified staff. At home they should be entitled to at least some checking to ensure they are developing and receiving a decent quality of education for their needs.

However I tend to agree with @ARichtGoodDram - in this specific thread the focus should be the family courts who yet again sent a victim back to their abuser and social services who failed to take action in time to safe the child.

Happy for you to start a separate thread to demand sacred caste status for HE parents.