Oh goodness....I'm feeling sick, physically sick. I'd just finished reading a shocking story on one of the home education lists, all about the bullying of a home educating family by a local authority, where the family was subjected to what appears to be huge levels of unwarranted suspicion, with the children being asked a string of leading questions, followed by a complete misrepresentation of the facts about the family to other professionals within the LA.
It was just about as bad as you could possibly imagine and the sort of scenario that will almost certainly become much more commonplace if Badman gets his way.
I flicked over to Bloglines and checked out Renegade Parent, only to find this story.
If you weren't feeling pretty blue before, then you almost certainly will be afterwards, and of course that will be held against you, as you are clearly mentally unstable!
Thanks for linking over - there have been some really detailed responses for Colleen. It's made me feel sick too.
ReplyDeleteAs you similarly highlighted on a previous post, the specifics are different for all of us and kind of irrelevant - it's the subjective, arbitrary nature of judgement, based on a mere snapshot in time (with possibly monumental consequences for the families) that sits outside of the law.
Law, of course, that is deliberately broad in definition specifically to guard against such ill-informed judgements. Graham Badman is not too stupid to understand this.
Lisa
You have to stop pretending you are afraid. They are not after you. You are a middle class married mother whose husband can afford a good lawyer. You are not worth the hassle for them. Your children live above the income established children should.
ReplyDeleteWhat really bothers them is all the people that are taking benefits to home educate, which are a lot. It won't look good for the Unicef report if children are poorer!
It's clear that in this country poor people are not meant to be free and try to live a life that was not meant to them. The poor are meant to be very humble and look very miserable in order to be pawns of the next big govermental agenda, so the power mad altruists can feel they have done something important with their lives. You cannot understand this unless you live it.
LEO:
ReplyDeleteFrom some of the cases i know about, it is pretty obvious that ss abuse can happen to anyone. I have even seen HEing families of consultant doctors being tailed by their own social work departments!