Letters to and from the Children's Commissioner's Office

...can be found here.

Choice quote:

"She (the Deputy Children's Commissioner)...is sure that any visits undertaken by the local authority will be done in accordance with the child’s wishes and her best interests."

Cough, splutter, er WHAT? That's interesting in that it defies reality rather more than anything else I've read in relation to this review, which really is saying something.

In a recent poll here, some 77% of HE children said they didn't want to see an LA official at all. The Badman report is insisting upon automatic sight of the child. How then can a visit be in accordance with the child's wishes?

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My letter to the Children's Commissioner's office.

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Dear Sir,

I note with interest your office's response to a letter from a home educating family, which may be read here:

http://maire-staffordshire.blogspot.com/2009/06/reply-from-childrenss-commissioner.html

and in which you wrote:

"She (the Deputy Children's Commissioner)...is sure that any visits undertaken by the local authority will be done in accordance with the child’s wishes and her best interests."

The DCC may be interested to know that in a recent poll of home educated children and young people which can be found here:

http://daretoknowblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/results-of-poll.html

some 77% of children said they did not want to see an LA official.

The DCC needs to know this in order that she may be disabused of the notion that in insisting upon the state having sight of the child, far from protecting children's rights, she will, in the majority of cases, actually be condoning the infringement of children's rights to privacy, freedom of association, to silence and to the ownership of intellectual property.

It would be very easy to run another poll along similar lines to the one mentioned above, this time to see if home educated children think it would be in their best interests to see an LA official. I suspect, from many conversations with HE children, that most HE children would not think that there was anything to be gained from such a visit, that it would simply be a stressful waste of their time and that it would therefore not be in their best interests.

We would be interested to know if the DCC is effectively suggesting that parents should not strive to protect their children's rights and best interests?

Yours sincerely,

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