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?

RIP beautiful Sara. Let down by those who should have loved you and cared for you.

Of course school is a protective factor there is no denying that. But that review also recognises the number of home ed children at risk of harm and serious harm is comparatively low.

It's also a review specifically focusing on harm to home ed children, I think we'd need to see a similar review/report into harm happening to children in nursery/school in order to compare figures (or as someone rightly pointed out percentages) to compare whether home ed is really that much of a 'risk'. Even where there is the protective factor of school, family, etc many children are still failed. Which why I think the whole home ed thing is just a distraction from the real issues going on where children are being murdered.

And this is the case for almost all the high profile cases we've seen in recent years. Family, schools, health visitors, all reporting. These children weren't hidden, people knew they were being abused.

What there absolutely does need to be an review into is children, like Sara, who were well known to social services who were then removed from school/nursery or the likes.

What did social services do when she was removed?
How did they replace the “keep an eye on her” job that had been given to the school?

How did they react to a deliberate removal of her from a place that had reported concerns? (That should be the same if that’s school, nursery, childminder, dentist - anyone who reports multiple concerns and then has a sudden removal either to HE or a different setting).

What do social services do when it appears a family are attempting to hide a child that is on their radar?

@ARichtGoodDram my god yessss

What a series of failures

School to monitor her ?!!!

Exactly.

We can speculate about common factors being school or not, step parent or not, but so often the one common factor these children have is that they have been seen multiple times by social services.

Why are families being given dozens of chances over a span of years to abuse these children and why are social services missing the escalation over the time span in cases when they are involved?

I’m willing to bet now that the review will show that social services did nothing when she was removed from school.

And that is the failing.

Not school. Not Home Ed. Social services failing to do the basic joining up of dots that were glaring out at everyone else.

It’s ridiculous that a child who had previously been in care having facial bruising had an outcome of “school can keep an eye”. Failure after failure.

I know home educated kids have been highlighted BUT the poor girl was on authorities radar before and after her birth, also while in school.

I would totally agree with this.

Also I'm just thinking, what about children under 5 who won't be in school anyway. Or those under 3 who might not even be in nursery. No one demands sight of them on a regular basis, no one thinks this is necessary, but surely the risk to those children is the same as the risk to older children who are home ed?

Would everyone with a child who isn't seen regularly at a nursery who thinks all home edders should have regular check ins be happy with a check in every month for themselves and their kids too? Or would they be annoyed there's a state assumption they must be a terrible parent who needs checking on?

That's not how it works through.
We home educate because school was really damaging to one of the children. School caused so much trauma that home educating works as it is nothing like school for us. We couldn't get the support child needed in school.
I don't want to be jumping through LA hoops when they failed my child so many times.

Often the LA person has no idea of Home educating differences or SEN. They expect it to be like school.

In this terrible case the abuse happened when the child was in school too.

There is only so many trained personnel and only so much time. Staff getting bogged down checking on all home ed families reduce the man hours they have for situations when actual safeguarding concerns are raised and with children who need checking up on

That would not have protected poor Sara though. The safeguarding check was done and case closed in 8 days.

When you deregister from school. The school has paperwork to send to the LA.
One of the questions is about safeguarding and if the school believe the child is at potential risk from removal from school.

A would presume that the school would have highlighted their concerns here. And that this should have been followed up by the LA.

Hm, as with most severely abused children, Sara was very happy while at school because it was the one safe space she had where she wasn’t being violently assaulted all the time. She knew going there she’d have 7hrs of safety and kindness from adults.

The school didn’t fail. Her parents murdered her slowly by breaking 25 bones, burning and beating her. They failed her. The others that failed her were the neighbours that HEARD her screaming in pain for months and did nothing.

I haven't read the whole thread and I don't have any answers. But one of the first news stories I remember was that of little Maria Colwell, who was killed by her step-father in 1973. Maria was about 8 months younger than I was and I read about her in The Daily Mirror, which my Dad pushed across the dinner table towards me every day, "want the paper Tortie?" My Dad wanted me to read the news and be part of the world. Maria's father-figure hated her and he took her out of the world in the most vicious way imaginable. The contrast is brutal.

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.

It's common for children and adults who are being abused not to tell and even protect their abuser. That does not mean she didn't feel safe there.

Do you honestly think that she'd rather have been 24/7 with her abusers instead of having 7 hours a day, 5 days a week where she wasn't facing that?

None of us know if she felt safe at school.

i hated school. I was on edge all day, watching every word I said, watching every move I made, absolutely terrified that I’d say or do the wrong thing and all hell would break loose.

Whereas one of my brothers loved school as he felt he could relax there and be free of our home for a while.

It’s such a complex situation for a young child.

Her fear of her parents outweighed her feelings of safety to tell school.
It’s the same with grown adult women suffering domestic violence unable to tell their family, work or the police. Doesn’t mean these women don’t feel safe or happy when away from their abuser.

No - when I say she didn't feel 'safe' enough at school, I mean she didn't have enough trust in the adults there to be able to confide in them.

Why are you setting such a low bar for schools and teachers? A place to give children a 'break' from abuse - that's not good enough.

Schools and teachers should have enough resources, enough time, enough skills and empathy to be able to spot children like Sara, build a relationship so that the child feels safe to ask the teacher for help.

And if teachers can't do that...then maybe every school needs an assigned social worker, who spends time based in the school every week, getting to know and working with at risk children like Sara.

A major part of a HV role is to identify families who need support or where there are safeguarding issues.
Families being monitored by SS are sometimes told they have to put their child in nursery so they are being regularly seen by someone.

Or social services and the family courts could just do their jobs properly?

Sara shouldn’t have needed to confide in a teacher. Or anyone. There was enough evidence in the family for her to have been taken into care multiple times. For her father’s tendency to domestic violence to be known. For a sibling to have been kept out of the family permanently.

What this case needed was actually simple - common sense used by social workers and the family courts years ago to keep her properly safe.

Until we the basics of that are sorted, until we stop allowing violent and neglectful parents to have years and years of chances after chances there’s zero point to specialist trained teachers or school based social workers because even when the bruises are seen and reported, even when the violence in the home is known, nothing is actually done.

NO.

homeschooling is not the issue here. Social services & the school were well aware of her bruises etc before he took her out of school. It is up to them to get their shit sorted.

HIS violent nature was already known about, was known about when she was put in foster care. HE should never have been allowed to have her back.

& before anyone jumps on me, no I'm not home schooling. I just have respect for people who are and think it's crap people want to poke more into homeschool than dirt out the SS who let these kids down, time & again.

A major part of a HV role is to identify families who need support or where there are safeguarding issues.Families being monitored by SS are sometimes told they have to put their child in nursery so they are being regularly seen by someone.

But families don't have to have involvement with a hv if they don't want to and if they choose not to no one demands sight of their children every month for safeguarding purposes. They're trusted to crack on and look after their kids.

Ss won't be involved with every family either so I don't think that's particularly relevant to my point that no one demands all families with younger children are regularly checked on.

If ss can demand young children are placed in nursery why aren't they insisting the school age children they're already involved with and know of remain in school?

@JetskiSkyJumper I am not demanding all HE are checked regularly for signs of abuse. Some HE families are guilty of educational neglect. HE families should be monitored for this, just as schools are monitored. It would have the side benefit of safeguarding some children, just as schools do, but it would not be its primary purpose.

Did you not read my entire post? Where did I say that giving a child a break from abuse is enough for schools?

As I pointed out many adults as well as children will not confide in people they feel safe with about abuse and even protect their abuser if asked directly. It's not necessarily to do with trust, there can be a shame, a feeling that It's their fault as well as a feeling that the abuser will make it worse if they tell. The abuser will often put those ideas into the victim's mind to stop them telling.

Do you honestly think that it would have been better for her to be with her family 24/7; to not be able to get away from the abuse, for her family to know she had no contact with anyone who might spot or her tell about the abuse? Really?