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?

You are right, I used to see adverts everywhere but just looked around based on your comments and lots are gone. And we live in a wealthy area.

You think that the council having more authority will help? Our council is directly in control of DS's education as no school has offered him a space and he's EOTAS with tutors at home. Guess how much safeguarding the council has given him over years of EOTAS? NONE, zero. They don't read the annual reports from tutors or professionals, they don't see him face to face ever, they don't answer the phone or emails. They don't care. He's pretty much invisible.

I have zero faith in LA's ability to keep children safe as a result of our experience. It has been shocking.

It sounds like you're justifiably angry with the way things are being run and how that has impacted your family. I agree, it's appalling. And no we don't need 'uneducated and unaware' people, but we do need proper support and safeguarding for all children whether they attend school or not.

I feel for anyone in the situations decribed in this thread. I absolutely accept that schools, LAs, CAMHS and social services can get it wrong in damaging ways.

None of that negates the need for proper child safeguarding, which in the vast majority of cases should involve some kind of outside contact beyond the home.

But LA have no money. Exactly why SS and SEN aren't supported right.
And they are unlikely to be given any to tackle this.
Hence it will be the uneducated and unaware doing the job.

LA spending on SEN has increased significantly. The real issue is that more and more children have ECHPs and LA can not cope with the demand.

But why is that?

Children are not suddenly developing SEN out of nowhere..
Lack of early help and helping kida with issues there.
Rammed classrooms with TA missing bc cuts. Hence school can't cope.
Academies that can easily get rid of SEN kids (bc not under LA control). And some with ridiculous behaviour/uniform policies.
Gove curriculum with narrow idea what qualifies as success. Unreasonable learning goals. No flexibility of system.
Cahms and the disaster with zero MH support.
Cancelling most special schools in name of 'inclusion'. Now LA have to pay private providers for SEN and children's homes.

Most comes down to money.

Just some.

This is going to get interesting too.

If you accept that CYP can be damaged by state institutions, can you understand how a family can be resistant (or more accurately fearful) of further outside contact?

@Peonies007 the number of children with SEN does appear to be increasing. Some of it may be due to a lack of early help. But there are an increasing number of children with complex sen - non verbal for example.

But why? Lack of early help and non existent Speech and Language services? Nurseries at fault? Parents not interracting with their children? Over diagnosis because school need diagnosis for funding?

You would be surprised honestly!

Another sad case. It's unclear if home ed or school but once again know to authorities, father in psychiatric hospital. Mother now also.
Babysitter was concerned so called SS a day before and was told this
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14189911/Mother-told-999-call-handler-felt-like-robot-confessed-strangling-seven-year-old-son-death-belt-handbag.html?ico=article_preview_xp_mobile

The poor girl was actually only home educated for a few weeks. Before that she attended a school and was therefore failed by the school, GP, police and Social services, all of whom she had involvement with over a number of years. All these services failed to intervene and prevent home education. They also failed to check on her once home educated despite fully knowing she was at risk.

I have had an extremely positive experience of home educated families, often social families with naturally high achievers. The parents offer a bespoke child centred education. Sadly state schools seem to be inflexible, failing thousands of ND children who need something a little different to thrive.

The majority of children go to nursery so I would think that’s where the focus needs to be. I’ve seen a few threads recently where awful situations are described as commonplace at nurseries and it sounds like many young children are not getting the care they need

@HoundsOfSmell the school reported. They can’t take children out of the house and they can’t prevent homeschooling

Being at home in general was the danger for her not just being ‘educated’ at home sadly. SS should have removed the poor girl to safety they let her down repeatedly

@Peonies007 even with a diagnosis schools don’t automatically get funding, and any funding they do get doesn’t cover actual costs in most cases

Well the plan is that local authorities will have monitoring over home educated kids. Inspections etc I can’t see the problem - we surely all want kids to be safe.🤷‍♀️

It’s a good idea to monitor but if they can’t even monitor kids on Child protection plans or at serious risk of harm they need to get that sorted first

Possibly.
Personally I think it's to with 2014 change in how SRN js funded. Before David Cameron's govt created the pointless paper (ehcp, quite often no one reads it), schools were funded from LA pot.
Then once EHCP created, each child should be allocated certain sum of money to pay to whichever school it is they are at.
But at the same time govt cut funding to absolutely everything AND at the same time didn't really fund EHCP's at all.
So, if you take your 'mild SEN' child who prior to 2014 coped ok and was funded by LA, suddenly schools saw funding for SEN withdrawn (unless they have ehcp) at the same time as general school/LA/cahms budgets also cut.
Plus the academies and narrow academic curriculum- consider same 'mild' SEN child - I'm from abroad originally and school system over there includes things like

• start age almost 7, quite often almost 8 (for example if eyes are not properly developed). You need GP and EP to okay child to start.
• school day of 4 hours
• no uniform
• timetabled lessons in art/music/woodwork etc
• class sizes of 18
• ski and swimming lessons timetabled. Courses in first aid etcetc.
• EP and specialist teacher in every school

Do you think child would need EHCP if system was setup this way?

Correct. Unless EHCP written properly in which case LA can be forced to fund properly.

The government are talking about making it legal to not fund EHCPs

Boom. So where will those kids go? If no funding?

It sounds like it is to prioritise those who most need support, rather than simply those who are best at advocating for their needs.

I completely agree. Children are collateral damage to lots of these people. Our children need to be safeguarded from them not the other way around!