National Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel Briefing on Children in Elective Home Education

In their May Newsletter, the National Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel provided a short briefing paper about the safeguarding of children in elective home education. The briefing outlines common themes and patterns identified in reviews where children died or were seriously harmed while being electively home educated.

 The review outlines that over half of the children in this study were previously known to children’s social care; of those who were withdrawn from school or had never attended school, health practitioners were often the main professionals who had knowledge of the child before the serious harm or death occurred. Therefore, they outline that it is crucial that effective multi-agency working is at the heart of local responses to help and protect this group of children.

The Panel recommends that safeguarding partners assure themselves about the effectiveness of their local systems to help safeguard children who are electively home educated. Learning from reviews highlights the importance of ensuring there is good safeguarding training on offer for elective home education teams within local authorities, and also that these teams are well connected with other children’s services. Therefore they suggest that safeguarding partnerships take appropriate action to make sure that all professionals understand their roles and responsibilities with respect of this group of children.

The full report can be found here.