Should we accept greater state monitoring of families in order to safeguard children?

[AllYearsAround]

This point has been raised on a few threads in reference to Sara Sharif - that the state should do more monitoring of home educated children if there's a possibility of uncovering abuse and saving a life.

But looking into it, most children killed by a parent or step parent are actually under 1
https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/research-resources/statistics-briefings/child-deaths-abuse-neglect

There have been a few awful cases recently of babies and toddlers being murdered, particularly by mums' boyfriends.

Would it not be more sensible then to put the time and money into monitoring families with young babies? We already have the system in place with health visitors.

Maybe health visitors should be a mandatory service, with regular (weekly? Monthly?) home visits and babies stripped and weighed/examined.

This would surely save many more lives than any additional monitoring of home education.

Sara was on social services radar before she was born. She was in care twice before she started school and one of her siblings was permanently removed from the family.

Additional monitoring of children living with known violent abusive parents should absolutely be a thing.

Sara was a child who should have been having very regular contact with her social worker. It would be sensible to put the time and money into protecting the children we know are in danger. Zero point in picking up their risks if they are then repeatedly ignored afterwards.

The failures in Sara’s case weren’t HE or a lack of HV’s or a lack of spotting issues - it was the complete failure in dealing with the issues properly after they were known. Repeatedly.

If we know that children under 1 are most in danger, shouldn't we be focussing on them?

YABU because it's not just about being actually killed.

There will be plenty of home educated 'off radar' children whose abuse is going undetected.

I asked a similar question on a large thread the other day but no one who was anti home ed, all home ed children must be closely monitored wanted to justify why the same shouldn't apply to those with babies/toddlers/young children not yet in school. Presumably because it would then apply to them and they wouldn't like the implication they must be incapable or abusive and have that oversight in THEIR life 🤷‍♀️

That’s staggering to read

Sure but only a tiny number of home educated children compared to children under 1.
The greatest benefit would surely come from mandatory health visitor contact and monitoring of the most vulnerable members of society.

If we know that children are living with violent abusive parents - as was the case for Sara before she was even born - shouldn’t we ve focussing on them?

I can’t think of a case where a child was killed by parents or partners that there had not been prior concerns from multiple sources - but there is no multiagency information sharing and not enough action. I’m not sure spreading scarce resources even thinner by monitoring every family when 99% of them raise no concerns is sensible.

Of course, but lots of under 1s will be unknown.

Needs to be a huge focus on children living with unrelated adults full stop. That’s the biggest factor.

If they have nothing to hide though why on earth would they object?

People don't want to pay taxes for more and bigger government. They don't and won't.

I said that on a thread and it got made about racism.

Under 1s are also more likely to be at home so health visitors could do unannounced spot checks - just to see what the home conditions are like, any bruises on the baby, are there any signs of unrelated males frequenting the property.

The leading cause of major trauma in the under twos is non-accidental injury. This has been well known and in the research and trauma data collected for years. There absolutely needs to be better risk assessment tools and stricter monitoring of those who fall into the medium to high risk categories.

The authorities could come and check on me and my children all day, every day, if it saved just one child's life.

Do we need greater intrusion in to families by the government? It seems to me that many of the children who are murdered by their parents / step parents have already been identified as vulnerable children long before it has escalated to this level of violence.

So what is the system going to be for parents who refuse to engage with the health visitor? Fines nobody will pay? Arrests? It’s just not workable.

We already have a health visitor system though, it could just be made mandatory and health visitors given rights of entry and rights to examine children. Wouldn't even need to be health visitors, it could be nursery nurses doing spot checks on homes.

No.

Every child murdered by a parent/with parental involvement was already known to CP Social Work. Every single one.

What we are doing doesn't work. Child Protection needs more funding. We need more foster carers for children at risk.

I wonder if the Children's Panel system (Scotland) might be a model. Get lay people (with training) involved. I think social workers get too 'accustomed' to what lay people would regard as abuse. Reality check, perhaps?

There's a lot of people that think home educating families need to be more closely monitored for safeguarding reasons now but identifying/monitoring under 1s would surely be more effective.

Do you understand the sort if legislation that needs to be passed in order to make something mandatory? It means you need to introduce a scale of punitive measures for those who refuse to engage.

Maybe health visitors should be a mandatory service, with regular (weekly? Monthly?) home visits and babies stripped and weighed/examined.

Health visitors aren't currently mandatory but it doesn't look good when people avoid them. They do visit regularly when you have young babies. Do you have any children?

As pp have said most of these cases where KNOWN to the authorities so there should be greater focus on keeping more of an eye on the children who are already at risk rather than the absolute insane idea of WEEKLY health visitor appointments for every parent.

That's just madness. Health visitors are already over worked and under staffed, and the vast majority of parents are loving parents.

I home educate my dc. The checks are adequate. We have no issues and find the LA very good and very helpful. Most home educators decline the visits though.

The real issue isn’t HE though it’s the fact that time and time again social services are incompetent and negligent. Majority of these poor children who are murdered are known to SS and they just failed to act. Sara was known to SS since birth and HE for a very short time. The real problem is Social services but the spotlight is on home education to distract from the real problem.