Tipping point: tackling the challenges in safeguarding children educated at home

Key findings

Families are choosing to educate their children at home for different reasons

Home education is no longer primarily driven by lifestyle choice or philosophical outlook. Many families are withdrawing their children from school and choosing to educate them at home because mainstream schools are unable to meet their children’s needs.

Elective Home Education teams are under-resourced to meet the needs of the current cohort of home-educated children

Local authorities are struggling to keep up with the growing number of children in home education and the increasingly complex needs of many home-educated children. A lack of capacity and resources are also having an impact on professionals’ ability to respond proactively to safeguarding concerns.

The child’s voice is under-represented in local authority practice

There is no strong legal framework on how to include children’s views and voices in local authority practice. Professionals are concerned that this means children’s experiences are going unheard and their needs unmet.

Existing national guidance is seen as outdated and unfit for purpose

Local authorities described how current guidance doesn’t effectively outline what is expected of home education teams. This lack of clear guidance impacts the relationships between families and local services, putting children at risk.

Recommendations

The Department for Education in England should:

• update and strengthen national guidance to reflect the scale and nature of the cohort of children being home educated today
• provide stable and sufficient funding for local authorities to safeguard and support home educated children
• support local authorities to deliver training and awareness of home education across the workforce
• promote proactive multi-agency practice in safeguarding home-educated children
• should support local authorities to ensure the voice of the child is heard in decisions about home education.