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 home educated. Our children were known to all the usual people except school. The oversight of school is just another net that also often fails. The likelihood is that oversight in the situations you describe would probably also fail as social services can be intimately involved with a family and still fail. It's dangerous to presume it would work. This is not what it would it be used for either.

At most we had one visit a year then the LA said ‘we’ve seen you a few times we are satisfied it’s all ok no need for more visits ‘ and to just send a yearly report and have a 6 monthly (5 min! If that !) call. We send a few samples of work too it’s barely anything ? I have dc with ASD as well who hate anyone in their ‘safe space’ so they either literally said hello then went upstairs or I had a meeting just on my own the LA were really really understanding. Surely it’s not too much to agree to if it saves some children’s lives ? If all home educators accepted a few extra checks which don’t take much then it could save the children who are in danger? It’s a social responsibility like vaccinating to protect those who can’t be ??

Maybe ALL families should have a 6 monthly visit from a social worker, house inspected, children physically checked over and any unrelated adults in the household checked up on?
That would save many more lives than just checking up on home educators.

You’re right it would I wish it was possible I wouldn’t object to it

You realise that many families desperately need a social worker esp when there are children with SEN involved and there just aren't enough SWs around for the current level of need. How on earth do you think it's even remotely possible to check all families on a regular basis?

Absolutely, and we're discussing a case where a child was well known to social services, had previously been known to have been abused by one or both parents and was living with a parent who had previously had a child taken permanently from their care - and yet when the school reported injuries to Sara they were told to 'monitor'.
Not sure why anyone thinks more oversight on home educators is going to fix that or 'save lives'.

This is two separate issues. SS and family court failed this child it's not about her education.

I home educate two children. One with severe send who is out of school as school can't meet his needs. This is a very very common situation in home Ed. If I have to prove he's getting a good enough education it would look appalling on paper. I only get away with it because I demand the LA find him a school and they can't find one to meet needs. I have reems of evidence he got no education for the time he did attend and I've paid for private assessments and diagnosis to prove he has significant needs. Initially I was blamed for his needs. If I'd have just gone educated from the start he would be forced into school as I could never show a reasonable education. Again I say high SEND needs is a huge chunk of the home Ed community. For this reason I'm anti more oversight. Sort the current education system so ALL children can access state education then I would have no objections.

My other home Ed child is out of school for anxiety but has significantly less needs. I almost get judgement from other home edders because I push the academics so much. I do have a very low opinion on a lot of them. One just recently was asking advice on what job her 18 year old could get as they were finding without maths and English she couldn't even get shop jobs. That woman has fucked up 3 children's opportunities in life by home educating and there are too many like that. But by forcing those kids into school send kids will suffer massively.

I also have experience of being abused, and caring for abused kids. I told school my parents lied. I've made reports for kids i work with and the investigation says kids fine when clearly not fine. My own child father was abusive and the family court failed us and ordered contact, luckily he drifted off once he got a new victim. His new baby with new partner had a suspicious number of injuries and even broken femur. Every single abuse case I've personally known about it's ss and family court failing these kids. Of course there are cases where noone knew what was happening but usually when they do an investigation into a child death multiple people were raising concerns but ss and family court didn't do enough.

I agree with you.
I home educated DS after pulling him out of mainstream school during year 1. He has autism and really wasn't coping, and I was told it was a 2 year wait for a SEN school.
I educated him at home for those 2 years and in all that time I had one phone call to ask me to fill in a form to say how I was educating him, which I filled in and sent back and heard nothing back.

Obviously I wasn't harming DS (well, obvious to me) but if I had done then nobody would have noticed for those two years.

I don't regret my decision though, he's now in year 8 at an amazing SEN school and I genuinely don't think he'd have ever got a place if I'd have stuck with the mainstream.

Sadly all of this 'oversight' requires money which is unlikely to materialise anytime soon. Home education has exploded because so many children with SEN or MH issues or who simply don't fit are failed by a rigid school system with less and less resources. If Governments don't have enough to fund state education, I can't see them pumping extra into HE.

Please explain to me how to tell between the "good" home educators and the "home educating to abuse" without checking on all children taken out of school.

What about children who do not attend childcare? I'm currently at home with my 19 month old and have seen a health visitor twice since he was born. I take him to the GP when needed and we regularly attend toddler groups. However, I can see that a set up like mine could potentially be used to hide abuse. I also think we need to look as a country at investing in more health visitors etc. I don't think it's just regulations around home schooling that's falling short, although for poor Sara it was undoubtedly an overriding factor.

The lack of oversight for home ed is shocking imo.

We could start with just intervening with children who have a history of abuse, known to social services, already have serious safeguarding concerns?
Sara was on a child protection plan before she was even born.
She should have been removed from her home well before she was taken out of school. Just keeping her in school and social services asking the school to monitor her for injuries didn't help her at all.

April 17, 2023
Sharif decides to home-school Sara. The school rings the council for advice and is told it should make a referral if there are concerns.
It was the third time she had been taken out of school following previous occasions in June 2022 and again after April 2023.
Staff see Sara later that day at school pick-up and she seems fine so they decide against it, even though she had been beaten earlier that day. She is never seen outside the home again.

Agree. It's not even a question of just money, it's people. Which trained, competent social workers are going to do it, who's going to do whatever follow up comes out of it. There's also the point that any expansion in state scrutiny and intervention is going to attract more people who'd do it for the wrong reasons.

IMO a lot of home educated children are probably not being properly educated / the parents have removed them from mainstream education for reasons which aren’t beneficial for the child.

Sure some do a good job, but I think the majority aren’t able to and half the posts here I see of people asking about are people paranoid about the state / authorities.

Also a huge challenge if pupils allowed to be home educated with little oversight for cultural reasons etc.

@AllYearsAround Maybe ALL families should have a 6 monthly visit from a social worker, house inspected, children physically checked over and any unrelated adults in the household checked up on?
That would save many more lives than just checking up on home educators.

Yes, it would. But that would be such a mammoth task I'd like them to start with the EHE children. At least children attending school are being seen by other agencies.

I think this sounds very sensible!

But don't forget..."lessons will be learned" Will they FUCK!!

Some people can be amazing home educators but some people who are very much ‘fuck the system’ can do it as an act of defiance and the kids suffer … I work in SEND and one special school I worked in we had parents who had fought for 2 years plus for a space, we had a family who basically got the place for their 7yo after their mainstream primary SENCO was amazing and advocated and translated for them and basically told us he needed the place, he came for 2 weeks and they pulled him out to home educate, because apparently it was no good what we were doing, we had to call home twice in those two weeks asking for the child to be collected as he was violently sick once, then another time was distressed and had a temp of 40, apparently we needed to try some some of herbal tea (?) , 6 months later their case worker rings asking can he have his place back! No! It’s not an easy way out and a lot of people think it’s a magic bullet especially if what they’re hearing every day from school isn’t what they want to hear . And I think a lot of the time when there are safeguarding concerns people want to bury their heads in the sand and not cooperate and there’s too much leeway to say ‘oh ok then’. If that makes educators and social workers the bad guy so be it.

I agree with the posts above. Default should be school with provision to apply for home schooling. I’d find home schooling a nightmare but I can see why it might it be the best thing for some children in some circumstances. If I was in the position where homeschooling was becoming an option, I’d be more than happy to go through hoops, demonstrate lesson plans, show how it was in the child’s best interests etc.

It does however seem blindingly obvious that a child who had been in temporary care due to violence should never have been allowed to be home schooled.

A little girl was withdrawn to be homeschooled from my daughter’s school. I am not convinced she will be getting any sort of education as her brother apparently was also withdrawn at 12 and has been seen out working with the dad.

For me it's the fact that there were safeguarding concerns and Sara was still allowed to be removed from the school. Surely the school at that point would have reported that to social services? And then would social services have had a duty to follow up on her? Anyone hearing that the school reported bruising and then the child is removed from the school can see why the child was removed.

That poor little girl 😔

They should make a separate service that checks on home educated families where they have 2 visits a month and and unannounced visit once a month and more so for Send children as the abuse rates for Send children is very high.

There is no law that could have prevented her being HE.

The fact she was removed from school is absolutely something SS should have followed up on as a matter of urgency.

Same as they should have if she was moved to a different school (a common tactic by abusers) or had any time off school for any reason. And also, in the case of this family, during school holidays.

The school appear to have done everything absolutely correctly. Social services have a lot of questions to answer - both about their decision to abdicate responsibility to the school after their short investigation into the last report and about what, if anything, they did after she was removed from school.

And of course the fact that they must have been involved in the process that led to custody being given to the father