A social worker's view on the Badman Review

http://www.radical.org.uk/barefoot/heducation.htm

Social Work and Home Education

Growing calls for greater regulation of home education need a social work
response. Social workers are being asked to exercise greater controls over
families who reject state education and keep home educated children under
closer surveillance. This move is authoritarian and inconsistent with social
work values and should be strongly resisted.

One of the proposals of the Badman Report and accepted by the government is
that local authorities should be given powers to prevent parents from
educating their children at home if a child’s 'safety' is in question. These
draconian powers are completely unnecessary and represent a step too far in
the direction of greater state intervention in family life. Children deemed
to be 'at risk' may be forced into school to allow them to be more easily
monitored. These changes would effectively put the local authority and home
educating parents in opposition to each other and create a great deal of
unnecessary stress for home educators. All this would be done for the sake
of improved child protection. In reality, the proposed new arrangements
would not result in better child protection and may actually cause more harm
than good.

A key question hinges on the meaning of the term 'at risk' and whether a
social worker should become involved. Social workers carry dual
responsibilities - for welfare and protection. In the welfare role the focus
is on the child's development in the broadest sense and in providing
appropriate services. Social work support is only provided with the
voluntary agreement of parents. In the child protection role the social
worker has powers and duties defined by the 1989 Children Act which includes
powers to investigate suspected abuse and neglect and, if necessary, powers
to remove the child if it is 'at risk of significant harm'. In this role
social workers can use their authority to adopt a firmer, more persuasive
style of working to reduce the risks and prevent the need for the child to
be taken into care.

If a social worker becomes involved with families where the child is home
educated it is inevitable that consideration will be given to whether the
child would do better in a state school. However, the social worker is not
an expert in education and should therefore take great care to avoid making
any 'educational' judgements. The social worker should bear in mind that
many children are failed by the state system and consider the emotional
impact on the parent-child relationship of enforced school attendance.

Recent legislation has scrapped the long-standing principle of
non-intervention with home educators and social workers are now required to
take a greater interest in the education and welfare of these children. In
addition, government guidelines are deliberately blurring the boundary
between child welfare and child protection. This has made the role of social
workers more complicated and caused some confusion about their legal powers.
On occasions, social workers inappropriately use child protection powers in
situations where there are 'safeguarding concerns' and questions are now
being raised about whether such powers are legally enforceable. Social
workers must ensure that their compulsory powers are only used in situations
where the child may be at risk of 'significant harm' - and relevant case law
shows that evidence of abuse or neglect must be substantiated.

Many problems have arisen in child protection work because the
'safeguarding' role has broadened the scope of the work but created enormous
confusion throughout the education system about what the term actually
means. There is a perception that families are sometimes treated unfairly
and professionals use 'safeguarding' to mean whatever they want it to mean.
It is not surprising that home educating parents are alarmed at the prospect
of social workers with greater powers visiting them.

The current system for protecting children from abuse and neglect is
well-established and there is no evidence that additional legal powers are
required. Although recent scandals have shown high-risk cases not being
picked up that is more due to the system being overloaded than anything
else. It is often the reluctance of local authorities to make use of their
existing legal powers in high risk cases that is the problem

Apart from the threat to civil liberties there are serious questions to be
asked about whether local authorities should be taking on additional
responsibilities at a time of financial cutbacks. There is a workforce
crisis in child protection social work and many frontline workers are
already struggling to cope with large caseloads. Extending the social work
role with home educators is definitely not a priority while high-risk cases
go undetected.

*Hilary Searing*