Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Bearer of Bad Tidings

Whoops, not a nice post to be putting up just before Christmas but I thought the subject constructive in some ways as it will serve to remind us why we have bothered to put in all that effort to preventing Schedule 1 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill from ever becoming law and why we must start all over again in the New Year.

More and more stories are emerging, usually from local HE email lists, of what amounts to abusive local authority practices. Home educators have been accosted on their doorsteps by LA personel and told that they must let the person in, despite never having seen them before in their lives. The LA bod may then demand to see evidence of the success of the educational provision (ie: will hold the family to an instantaneously FAR higher standard than schools routinely manage), and that the right to continue to home educate is dependent upon an official stamp of approval from this stranger.

The LA officer has also been known to state in front of the children that one of the reasons why they are there is because the parent may be abusing the child. Luckily most HE children I know, however young, are worldly-wise enough to know that clip-board bearing officials can talk complete rubbish, so it is unlikely to create trouble, but REALLY!

Honestly, if LA authorities want to get into the business of actually saving lives, they should get out and grit the roads.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Every single parent who has faced this kind of abuse from the LA needs to get it in writing and send it to either their own MP or better yet to Graham Stuart who has been brilliant.
I've actually had the opposite experience. I usually hear from my EWO around Oct. In the wake of this awful review he has retired. It's a shame as he was one of the good guys, but I don't blame him. The new guy has yet to emerge--I haven't come across anyone who has met him yet. Perhaps he is taking a wait and see approach.

Anonymous said...

We got this when we started home edding in 2005 when the woman EWO shouted at me that she/they had the 'right' to come into my home.

How can you have a relationship with someone who lies to you right away?

Maire said...

The lying is what makes it impossible for me to voluntarily have a relationship with them, that and their crap attempt at meeting my child's needs in school. I also have not heard from anyone this year, one little silver lining.

Anonymous said...

yes the lying is what really get to you so many half truths it hurts! we never have a relationship with them! they failed our child and then told lies about us and our child!

Jenny said...

We were doorstepped with days of withdrawing our children in 2007 and told 1- we had to let the lady in. 2-Her boss said she 'had to enter' 3- that the purpose of her visit was to fill in a form about us. 4- That we couldnt see the form 5- We couldnt fill the form in for her and 6-That we had no right to see what she had written about us nor contribute.
I said in that case I definitely wasnt letting her in. The campaign of harrassment went on for months- as it had done when my children were in school from 'inclusion services' staff.( who wanted us to back off from fighting for SEN provision the children were entitled to)
The GP rang, asking us to present my middle child for a medical and explain all her casualty admissions.( I refused- I was happy to discuss them by phone but not be medically examined without a medical reason or request from social services)
Incidentally Social services had got so sick of 'inclusion services' and my childrens last headmaster making malicious CP referrals that they wrote to them telling them that they had repeatedly spoken to us as parents by phone and in person and not to contact them again unless they had something more reasonable and concrete in terms of safeguarding concerns!( one was that our daughter had come to school without lunch- she forgot her two sandwiches- she had everything else!)

So yes SS know of my children and told Education to take a flying leap as we were good parents!

... and we are supposed to trust that these people can assess our standard of safeguarding, education and be trusted to decide whether we should have to register and be allowed to re-register!!!!

Anonymous said...

Jenny that is so wrong what happened to you your daughter forgeting sandwich it makes me so angry.The campaign of harrassment went on for months- as it had done when my children were in school from 'inclusion services' staff.
This is what they do it is a campaign of harrassment with lies as well! That is why we will not have anything to do with our LEA/DCSF they tell lies about us and our child we will never let them into our house over our dead body!

Carlotta said...

I am pretty sure that social services tend to use a lower bar when it comes to investigating HE families, which means that HE children in the UK have been taken into care just in case, and then when SS realise they may have over-reacted, back-covering occurs, and only after huge efforts by parents, friends and MPs on behalf of the families are the children returned.

Presumably though, these children will count as having care plans, and having been taken into care...not that the whole intervention was completely unwarranted, extremely damaging and should not have been counted in the figures and these figures will be used to support the case for yet further state intervention.

mrszug said...

an article possibly of use to you
http://tinroofcottage.typepad.com/love_in_a_tin_roof_cottag/2009/12/live-in-the-uk-the-un-now-owns-your-children.html

thank you so much for your work

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