Khyra Ishaq was NOT home educated. There is no record of her being deregistered. She was taken out of school when there were already considerable concerns about her, concerns which her being in school were not actually addressing. The authorities knew about her and tried to visit her home and did vist on more than one occasion; when they got no answer at the door, they walked away and didn’t go back. Mr Badman, quoting his discredited stats here AGAIN, admitted there was no evidence for HE being used for a cover for child abuse in his review. BBC & Labour, Do NOT use a dead child, one who the authorities knew ALL ABOUT, to try and create a story about us. That is shameful.
The Channel 4 reporting is more accurate.
If social services are brushing cases like this aside now, how much worse will it be when the same people are trying to fit in 50,000 lots of visits of 16 hours a year per child to families doing NOTHING WRONG AT ALL.
Baby P died at home when he was under 2. Does that one case, or even the many others like it, mean that all 2 year olds have 16 hours of visits by Social Services a year? And would it save any of them if they did?
There are ALREADY perfectly good laws in place which allow Social Services to muscle in on a child if there are safeguarding concerns. Hiding behind “the rules on home schooling are very weak” is just an attempt to justify why they didn’t do anything with the powers they had. They walked away. They knew, they were aware and they had full child protection powers. They didn’t use them. THEY DIDN’T USE THE POWERS THEY HAD. They let her stay at risk and therefore, they let her die.
And you have to ask, why? Why walk away, knowing full well she was a child protection case? Why? Did someone ask them to? Were they short on budget and knew they could pass the buck on to HE. Did someone know they’d be thanked for providing a convenient case of HE child abuse? Why did they walk away from that door?
In effect, this child was in almost exactly the position that the government say will save HE children from abuse. She left school, the authorities were notified. The authorities visited. They were even trained to deal with child abuse and knew that was a concern in this case. And she was left to die at the hands of her mother and her boyfriend. It didn’t save her to be known to the authorities. It didn’t save her to be on a list.
Forget it. The law on lawful home education may indeed currently mean that people about whom there are no concerns should not be under suspicion, but the law on a family where there are welfare concerns is extremely clear. Social Services have powers. End of.
