www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/may/19/schools-england-police-homes-absent-pupils
Schools in England send police to homes of absent pupils with threats to jail their parents
Write a couple of rude tweets while you’re at it.
Believe it or not, jail.
Or tell them they look like your gay nana
The Lesbian Nana is my favourite. If she didn't exist, GB News would have to invent her. A walking avatar of everything that's wrong with the police. Is it fair to judge her like that, based off a handful of video clips of her behaving atrociously and unprofessionally? Maybe, maybe not. We don't typically ask that question when judging the actions of male police officers caught out on camera.
Either way, the Lesbian Nana is a superstar in my eyes. Can't wait to see what she gets up to next.
Where the fuck is lesbian nana when you need her
Probably manhandling another autistic teenager.
*womanhandling
*nanhandling
My favourite.
Easy now, we need the police to turn up at the house, not for the guy to do hard bird.
Be a 12 year old. They’ll come and taser you asap. Haha
The school has no power over police to "send them" so I'd be taking this with a pinch of salt. If police ARE going to parents' homes then I'd suspect it's dedicated schools officers
Theirs additional things at work, criminal, safeguarding, or children themselves are in trouble with the cops.
You say this but my experience of this issue is that the entire system from the schools to the councils to law enforcement are woefully ignorant of how any of it is supposed to work.
My daughter's school called the police on me when I dropped her off during COVID, on the basis that both parents had to be keyworkers in order for kids to be allowed to go to school (I'm a keyworker, my wife isn't). The police were naturally perplexed by the situation and told them it wasn't their problem.
The same school then tried to fine me for an absence in 2022, then when I pointed out the fine doesn't adhere to their own local policy or the policy of the council they claimed they don't need to follow any such policy. Ultimately their request to the council failed because of their own incompetence in filing it too late so I left it.
They then tried to fine me again more recently, but this time the council's incompetence meant I never received the FPN and they instead tried to proceed straight to prosecution. When I pointed out to them that this also did not follow their own policy, they initially also said the policy did not apply. Unfortunately for them the copy of the FPN I was meant to have received stated in black and white that it was issued in accordance with the policy. I am now demanding that they explain this discrepancy but fully expect some compensation, as I'm sure the Local Government Ombudsman would have a field day with it.
Basically though, it's morons all the way down.
I deal with schools in my job. Not in this capacity. But all this chaims. The amount of incompetent twats. And these are the ones in high positions is staggering.
Sorry but what the actual fuck? They seem to think they get to pick and choose when they follow their own policy but also get to enforce that policy onto others. Honestly the first time they turned around and said they don't have to follow their policy I would have said 'fine but nor do I'. Either both parties follow it or neither do, that's just contract law 101.
The public sector in a nutshell unfortunately
The article says “community police”. Not sure that includes the schools officers but it’s certainly not the officiers the original commenter would find useful.
Definitely not officers from a response team
The two things aren't completely unlinked.. High rates of truancy are highly associated with subsequent criminal behaviour.
Or with depression.
Or with being a victim of abuse/bullying at the school.
Or with falling behind and failing and feeling ashamed to be there and giving up.
Or with multiple other things schools often will ignore/overlook because its easier to just punish instead of fix/get help for the student.
Where did you get this "highly associated" number from? A quick glance at government reports show a 13% drop 2021 to 2022 and a 80% fall over the 10 years prior in numbers of children cautioned/sentenced. So if truancy is going up, it isnt leading to initial crimes by children at least?
How does punishing the poor/fining/sending them to prison and causing them to lose the ability to work fix the problems that exist? Its just a "look tough on x" position that doesnt fix the issue.
Not to mention of course, what do we do with the kids while mum and dad are in prison over this? The state take them in? A system well known for child abuse and causing way worse issues?
Plenty kids with genuine issues, plenty with trashy parents taking the piss and not giving the fuck. These kind of one size all fits all headlines are unhelpful.
I’m not one to complain at truancy because I used to skip school due to severe bullying to the point my parents were threatened with prison. And I’d say many kids who skip school have poor home lives or are scared of bullies
However, some parents don’t give a shit and let their kids do whatever they want. When I was 17 our next door neighbours packed up and left one day, they had three kids under 18, they left their doors a wide open and loads of stuff so me and my sister went in to see what they’d left and there were loads of letters from our school about her daughters absence…. She apparently went to the same school as us but we’d never seen her. Her other daughter was 14, already pregnant and tattooed smoking all day, the mother and step dad gave ZERO fucks…. They even left the kitten behind to fend for itself, so I’m glad I went into the house otherwise she could have died. Kids bedroom was a mattress on the floor covered in urine. Some parents need police visits. These children should never have been in her care.
I know from direct experience the support for mental health issues generally is miserable.
Given estimated population prevalence of 3-5% one child in every class has ADHD.
No one will care. They'll struggle their whole school career, baring an even smaller minority who get noticed by teachers as being too disruptive.
Similar stories apply for ASD.
And then there's a bunch of 'second order' issues that we manufacture with 'modern society' - bullying leads to depression, leads to 'going off the rails' and often becoming 'part of the problem'.
Dysphoria manufactured by coercive stereotyping and toxic echo chamber culture war bullshit make children brittle.
So yeah, they're maybe a correlation with truancy, but I think it's not a causal one.
Childen who are finding education nourishing and enjoyable don't bunk off. It's as simple as that.
But children for which school is a form of hell, because no one understands them an no one seems to care? Well, yeah.
But it doesn't need to be that way. Given we know that 3-5% of children have ADHD... why the hell do we not routinely screen for it? Likewise ASD.
OK, a 'proper' assessment takes a load of time and effort, but a 'pre screening questionnaire' filled in by someone who knows them is actually a pretty solid indicator.
A classroom presence (I mean, I'd say teacher, but I don't see why it couldn't be a teaching assistant or similar) who knows what to look for and can refer for 'proper' assessment likewise.
But genuinely I think a lot of children are being failed. It doesn't require bad parents either (I mean, that doesn't help) but plenty are simply ignorant of what might be going on. Stuff like ADHD and ASD are notorious for not being spotted because they've a high heritability and thus it's often ... well, "Just like their dad at that age..."
Likewise prison - the prevalence of ADHD in prison is estimated at around 10x that in general population. ASD? Likewise, much more common in prison than outside. Why do you think that is?
Because I'm pretty confident it's a cohort of children who've been failed throughout their formative years, who get reckless and antisocial as a result... and then have "different" cognitive function that makes them just that much more likely to be treated harshly by law enforcement in various ways.
Ad someone who works in this area I am sus...
Police rarely ever get involved, its mostly teachers, a escalation of response, support, enforcement, and court actions.
If Police are involved, its alot more serious, safeguarding, crime or youth Justice etc such actions are happening.
...
Police are too busy, rarely involved and irs mostly a local authority matter vs a Police one.
It'll be the school liaison officers. They are police officers but their role is based at a specific school.
To be frank, it’s not a priority for police turning up to a burglary after the fact since they have a very limited ability to gain actionable intelligence and to then prosecute the people.
Then they can’t complain when the public loses all faith in them and start taking matters into their own hands.
Suddenly worth the time then
That's too late. The public have already lost faith in our public servants
This is what the Tories have wanted all along
The problem is with investigating the crime. Whether the investigation is conducted by the police or the public it makes zero difference since they are all using the same limited evidence to come to conclusions. The only difference is that the public tend to come to the wrong conclusions and innocent people get hurt. If the public could identify the burglar than the police would arrest them.
They love to complain about lack of evidence, but then refuse to go looking for it. Every interaction I’ve had with the police around this kind of thing has been me doing their detective work for them and then bugger all being done with it. There’s more sources of evidence than there ever were previously. Doorbell cameras, CCTV, phones etc. They’re just not interested in finding it and going through it. I’m sure lack of resources is part of it, but it certainly isn’t reassuring to the general public.
Like I said, all this is going to lead to is people not calling and dishing out their own justice instead, and people will die as a result. I don’t condone it, but at this point I understand it.
They love to complain about lack of evidence, but then refuse to go looking for it. Every interaction I’ve had with the police around this kind of thing has been me doing their detective work for them and then bugger all being done with it.
My experience of dealing with the police is giving them CCTV evidence from two sources, giving them a picture of an acquaintance who was likely to have done it, along with their home address.
The police managed to lose all of this.
Very similar experiences here.
I had them complain I couldn't provide evidence. I couldn't because it was a bank and they wouldn't just had their CCTV to me for obvious reasons, but they said if the police asked they would provide it. Plus I basically gave them a map were they could have asked any other business for footage.
If you have CCTV of an individual you then need actionable intelligence to then pursue it.
If you can provide the police with actionable intelligence it will be dealt with. If a response officer conducted a “comprehensive” investigation into every complaint and pursued every lead — including the leads that don’t appear to be actionable — then that response officer cannot respond to individuals going through a mental health crisis, the non-stop domestic violence calls, etc. With the limited resources the police have got to prioritise.
The perspective from the police is that policing in the UK is broken. You are not going to find many officers that have belief in the system.
To be clear, I’m not blaming individual officers - the entire system of policing in this country is broken as you say. I’m just trying to express that the public sees itself as having a social contract with the police, and right now that contract is being violated in a way that is going to become very difficult to repair if serious reform doesn’t happen. In an ideal world, police shouldn’t be responding to people having mental health issues. Trained mental health professionals should be.
The majority of police will agree that the contract is broken: CPS is underfunded and can’t deal with cases; Police are hesitant to use their powers due to the recent legal rulings and PSD conclusions; police just cannot deal with the massive workload that they are presented with; police now have to pick up the pieces from the collapsed mental health services in this country; ultimately, criminals just don’t get dealt with and, even in the cases you get a successful prosecution you are ultimately left thinking “what was the point?”
So accurate and that's only a small part of it nvm the hours of paperwork for a swear word or hospital watches or general drunking idiots fighting on every corner etc
If the public could identify the burglar than the police would arrest them.
Except that even when the public have evidence from CCTV or device tracking or whatever the police just say they don't want it or can't use it.
Just reflect for a moment. The police say they can’t use that evidence… … That’s not the opinion of the police, that’s the opinion of the CPS. The CPS have HIGH standards when it comes to convicting criminals.
If the public could identify the burglar than the police would arrest them.
absolutely not. they'd "lose" the cctv footage like has been several times.
A few years ago my mum had her purse stolen from her house by an old "friend" who came to visit, she was the only person in my mum's house, the purse was there before she visited and gone after she'd left, and my mum received notifications as her card was being used in local shops.
She ordered a freeze on her card and called the police, they visited, she gave them her friend's name, address and a list of transactions showing where the card was last used, all they had to do was send officers to the shops to collect CCTV and arrest my mum's friend, but they didn't do any of that, they didn't do anything. My mum called back after 2 months to find out what was happening, only to be told "insufficient evidence, case closed".
Same story with my dad when travellers stole his christmas lights, he passed his home CCTV footage to the police, only to be told "insufficient evidence, case closed".
I’m sorry to hear about your bad experiences. In the second case, it sounds to actually be a case of insufficient evidence because they were not able to gain a positive ID of the suspect(s).
In regards to the first, the problem seems to be a failure for different police forces to communicate.
My husband works in CCTV, the police aren't turning up fast enough even when they report an ongoing burglary. If at all.
The other poster isn't wrong that this is having a huge effect on peoples faith in the police.
When it comes to ongoing burglary’s the police try to turn up, the problem is that response officers are overstretched, they are occupied with other calls and quite a few “drivers” on shift are not blue light trained.
The police try to do stuff but with the poor resources things just can’t be dealt with.
I received a form in the post asking me to fill in in detail everything I had lost and that was the only correspondence from the police after my initial 999 call. The form didn’t even make sense and I couldn’t get help to fill it in.
How is it that I can lose £7000, be out of work whilst having a mortgage to pay, a family to feed and I get absolutely 0 support? Even when there’s CCTV of the person ransacking my van?
Even a face to physically speak to would have made a major difference in the way I felt I had been treated(been let down).
If I was an important figure, they would have been round there dusting for fingerprints and making enquiries, checking cctv over something measly like a £20 purse being robbed.
I’m not a fuck the police person and I have always respected the police but after that experience, I have a very negative point of view towards the police and I certainly won’t be wasting my time with the police next time someone ransacks my van
It always annoys me how a bike theft or tool theft might rob someone of their livelihood and go completely without investigation, yet the theft of an expensive but fully insured 2nd car that might be of high value but is of very little consequence to the owner will get a lot more.
Even investigating one small crime PROPERLY will almost always end up preventing many more, instead they have a small amount of work many times over with diminishing approval in the eyes of the public each time they do the bare minimum.
I'm betting that things like theft then 90%+ will be done by people who have done it before and will do it again, and with no consequences and a profit who's going to stop?
They don’t have limited ability to gain actionable intelligence, they can do some actual detective work, review cctv, check local areas reports, etc. I’ve lived across the Uk and many parts of it actually treat burglary as a crime and follow up on it.
In metro areas it’s unsurprising people don’t have faith in the police when they refuse and fail to do basic police investigations in things like burglary.
I've had something similar happen. My bike got stolen right infront of a bank on a high street, the bank manager told me he would give any possible evidence he can to the police, so I reported it. Police basically said there is no evidence of a crime taking place without even talking to anyone at the bank, which was 100m from the police station.
I've also had the whole we are gonna dismiss this due to lack of evidence then they had 2 eye witnesses and I injuries that are nearly impossible to do to yourself which the police took multiple images of.
Unless you're crime is on their weekly list of targets they dont care.
It’s not really a matter of not caring, it’s that the police really do have to prioritise cases, which makes them focus on cases where the possibility of immediate harm is present and/or it’s a slam dunk case. A lot of the “true” police work of investigating crimes is something response officers cannot do due to time constraints and the pressures to prioritise.
It’s not something police enjoy doing, but it’s something a broken police force has to do.
Tbh I cant fault the response officers but both of these were slam dunk cases and one did fall into the immediate harm/child welfare kind of case. Just the case ended up with nothing happening.
Oops you said a police woman looks like your lesbian autistic aunt. Straight to jail.
Oh what's that davr you've been out stealing anything you could get your hands on again. tumbleweeds
These are dedicated Safer Schools or Youth Engagement officers not burglary crime squad. It’s not that hard to understand.
Yep. People don't use their brains before commenting. Just another day on reddit.
Bout 5 years ago I had someone in my garden looking through a gap in my curtains and when they saw me ran off and jumped over the fence, phoned the Police who told me "maybe they are looking for their friends and had the wrong address" This was around 1am on a Saturday night and I am meant to be a vulnerable person.
20 years ago when I first left home I had smack heads break into the room I was staying steal everything, the Police did come out and despite finger prints even a footprint of someones shoe and the Police admitting to me they knew who did it they didn't arrest the people as they said it wasn't worth their time as they were serial offenders.
Also when I was 16 me and college friends were laughing and joking in a town centre and one of us swore and 2 Policemen came up to us and threatened to arrest us as they assumed we were swearing at them, a few weeks later I was mugged and phoned the Police, went in to give a statement and they acted as if I was wasting their time I told them I had no way of getting home (6 miles away) and was told to just walk it, country roads with zero streetlights at 10pm at night.
Where does it say police threatened parents? It reads to me like it's the school.who does that. Police get called as there's been no sighting of the child and there's safeguarding issues.
You’re either deliberately being obtuse to push some stupid point or are just plain dumb.
All kids are required by law to receive primary education for obvious reasons and parents withholding them from attendance clearly works against the best interest of the kids and society at large.
Second, if the police are understaffed and overextended that they can’t perform their basic duties I think it’s obvious that the failure lies at the feet of whoever regulates police work, funding and other matters so your anger is misplaced and misguided.
Think on!
Fuck that, I got way more enrichment and life skills out of my time "bunking off" to either travel or do what I wanted. School is fine for the most part, but it is very much a one size fits all system which ultimately means it isn't ideal for everyone.
If I want to take my kids out of school for a holiday, to see a concert, go to an event, or anything else I think is worth their time I'll do it.
Also how hypocritical are schools? They won't allow you a day off for yourself such as going off on holiday or leaving early to go watch a game, but they'll often have ski trips each year and a trip to France. Tough luck if you're poor and can't afford that, you won't be allowed time off or fun, you'll be expected to do the same hard school work while the richer kids are living it up.
Schools have liaison officers whose full-time role it is to be stationed at that school. Many schools cover the officer's salary. Why would they come to you when you're burgled?
Read the article mate.
Car theft and many theft type crimes in general are considered less important as most people have insurance so I was told....don't know if it's true but I wouldn't be surprised
I don't understand what jailing parents would do surely this would make them not do what you want further? Has anyone asked what it is thats making these kids turns up? I used to bunk because the teachers would be in power trips have to wear uncomfortable clothes and 90% of the subject we're not going to get me money when I leave. What's the odds these kids have similar issues? What about bullying? Schools refuse to do anything about that and is a cause for truency. We really need to looks.in to our teachers and how they get paid. I've had some teacher I would kill and have been amazing (I still think about them today) but there's some teachers that ate just sooo lazy it's unreal
My sentiments exactly
Came here to say this
Farmer having vehicles stolen? Police do nothing Horde of a certain community threatening teachers with death? Police do nothing. Junkie steals £100 of steaks and 20 bottles of Smirnoff "to feed kids". Police do nothing.
Kid says mean thing on twitter police arrive. Parent doesn't send kid to school police arrive
Absolutely shit show tbh. No wonder people have just started going for vigilantism.
Have a go at the police if you like but unless this country gets on top of poor parenting then f all will improve. The scum breed faster than normal folk and take the piss with their feral children.
They have to fulfil all the social needs while also bring defunded. So much of their effort goes into finding ways to justify putting crime reports into categories that are not actively tracked so that they don't affect their records, and then focusing their active efforts on easy stuff that is reliably achievable.
It's what government policies incentivise them to do, as it is the most effective way to deliver the best reports they can with the resources available to them.
They will sometimes send out an officer, but it's essentially a lottery system. They literally can't do more with what they have.
14 years of Conservative leadership and austerity.
Don’t pay your council tax they’ll show up within days
The police will always act quickly on behalf of other public sector agencies, and delay or refuse action against them. It's the same across the entire public sector.
Say biological sex exists
Police exist to make sure you pay tax and keep the state existing, not to help you
It's easier to bully normal parents than catch actual criminals. The stats for closed cases will look much better if you tackle one of those things.
Police doing what a social care system should be set up to do.
Afaik this is the kind of thing that 'early help' and social services will get involved over, but it is contingent on cooperation.
Most local authorities have gutted their early help services as there's no money left for it. Families get mostly abandoned until it gets to "child protection" status, by which time the damage is done.
You know mash teams are a core of social work right?
Add it to the long list of other functions the police do that other agencies should be.
They are in theory, but early help-type social care is so under-staffed and under-resourced right now that they barely have time to do proper "interventions" with families that would help, like helping any child emotional or parenting issues that are behind the school absences
Social care can’t use force, so police is used in that case
Force to do what? It's absenteeism in school, not a violent crime. There shouldn't be any force used. It should be just a visit and an explanation of the consequences at the start.
Yeah at the start. And what are the consequences at the end?
Some sort of legal enforcement? Perhaps by officers of some sort of law enforcement team? That's exactly what is happening, those consequences you spoke about have come to fruition.
As someone who works in schools, I can 100% guarantee this wasn't the start. The police don't go round because you've bunked off 5th period maths.
It’s a truant, not Al-Qaeda.
It will be yot this is the social care system.
Seems like a great use of already overstretched police resources.
Maybe they should just skip this step and move straight to trying to use the army to fill the void like they normally do ha.
Obvious waffle policies to get police involved to try and look "tough on the subject" when it clearly isnt useful to anyone who even looks lightly at the subject.
Of course fixing the actual issues is too hard, just threaten people, tory 101.
"I took my child out of school for a holiday and found the army camped at my door when I got back"
Average Daily Mail headline.
But think of the international fallout when they launch tactical strikes on benidorm to catch the parents taking their kids on holiday
I assume this is sarcastic but I personally think this is hugely important. A kid not getting an education, for whatever reason is a massive issue and more importantly something that is very likely to result in far more police work (or at least social care expense) over the next 40 years of that child's adult life. I'd classify this as a rare example of forward thinking and time invested that might yield a benefit a lot further down the line.
Yes it sucks that burglaries aren't being investigated and that needs to be addressed but this shouldn't be an either/or decision.
Between my own issues and hanging out with kids with similar issues, my kids issues and the other families with similar struggles I've been in contact with for support and my work with vulnerable teenagers, I've known very few cases of kids missing out on school that would be at all helped by police involvement. Imo its more likely to further escalate the situation. So much of not going to school involves strong emotions that are hard to deal with, for the child, the rest of the family and the school. Police involvement is scary. I did have police involvement when I was younger that did cross over somewhat into dealing with my attendance, it was frankly traumatic and contributed to my school refusal. When school becomes associated with that level of fear , how is a child meant to feel safe attending?
It's a fair challenge to what are possibly prejudices on my part. Round my way there are plenty of kids who, from a distance, look like their only problem is just not giving a shit (which often looks like learned behaviour from parents as well). I do sometimes find myself wishing someone would go in and put their shoe up someone's ass and try and get some proper behaviour out of the family in general.
But I guess I don't know what it's actually like to grow up in that environment, or what a police visit would actually achieve.
It often absolutely does look like they just don't give a shit, but thats usually a coping mechanism. When needs are routinely unmet, and you know its going to screw up your future, you can either dwell on it or stop caring about shit. And its so hard to pull things back when it reaches that point, because not giving a shit makes you resistant to solutions, if anyone ever decides to start offering them.
A kid not getting an education is bad. Sending the police to threaten their parents isn't a good solution, for the kids, the parents or the police. It's only on the table as a solution due to the last decade and a half of cuts to the services that would actually be better placed to help those families.
lets be real, if the kid bunking off school all the time and mother doesn't give a shit, forcing him to learn about chemistry and shakespeare is hardly going to make much difference to his life. As long as he can read and write and do basic maths he's gotten all he ever will out of education.
Isn't it important to have children attend school? I imagine insufficient education has an impact on future crime.
It is. But this is not a good way to do it.
I suffer from an anxiety disorder, for two years (Y9-Y11) something snapped and I struggled with attendance through to leaving. I just couldn’t sit in a classroom with my peers without breaking down.
I was seen by CAMHS who told my parents I was faking it. I returned to school and they didn’t know what to do with me, so shoved me in isolation until leaving.
IDK about you, but spending two years in isolation feels like it’s very much a problem rather than ‘faking it’.
Post-16 College offered pastoral support and managed to get a handle on it (staff were awesome). This is where the government should be focusing, addressing the root cause.
My parents weren’t threatened but I can guarantee this wouldn’t have improved the situation. People going through this do not think rationally.
Sorry this happened to you. Our daughter went through something similar. No help from the GP, the council's education department, the school or anyone else, just threats to and eventually taking us to court and fining us for her lack of attendance.
It sucked, even in 2012 mental health wasn’t taken seriously.
Sure, things have improved over the years but the government doesn’t seem to want to address what is fast becoming a fully-blown crisis.
Covid/Lockdown definitely exasperated that and I feel like that generation are in for a rough few years.
I mean the isolation is horrible and shouldn't happen but I keep hearing terrible things about CAMHS non stop these days. I'm really angry that happened to you and if I ever meet the people that decided you faking was an easier option I will throw things at them.
I heard some stories about cahms growing that I always thought were exaggerations. Things like "My sister was told she was depressed because she was agnostic", and "my 5'11 friend wasn't given support for an eating disorder because she was above a certain weight. Not BMI, weight".
Then I had a single meeting with them and walked away fully convinced all those stories were true. You could tell me cahms uses leeches to cure autism and I'd believe you
Yeah they were atrocious even 5-10 years ago and long before that. I went for depression (5 years at that point by the time I got seen) and despite knowing all the history and seeing the evidence, the therapist said I didn't have depression, just low mood. 6 months of persistent low mood is the qualifier for depression iirc, so how is a number of years not?).
Would often get some very condescending therapists who didn't want to be there, and would often be told to smile or to forget about it. They would often tell my mum the personal things I had said that I didn't want nor had given permission for to be said past those walls. After I found that out, I just stonewalled and didn't say anything important after that.
I absolutely hated that place, it pulled me out of my favourite lessons every time as well and would refuse to ever accommodate it or change the day, which meant I fell behind in my best subjects.
They were absolutely useless from the start, and massively damaging on my already fragile mental health by the end.
Back in 2012, the waitlist was 3-4 months and I didn’t know what was up with me so I was looking forward to finally figuring it all out and moving onto recovery.
What a gut punch it was. If I had to wait years (as you would now) to be told that, I can tell you my response would not have been as rational.
Over the years I’ve developed coping mechanisms, but teens don’t really figure that out without support. It takes years to come to terms with it.
Fuck them, I hate them so much.
I once dated someone who was in one of their care facilities around the same for several months and they could never decide if the experience was positive or not because it was a scary place to be but they did eventually recover (if you ignore relapses). It was around the same school years as you too.
But now all I constantly hear about is how they fail kids from the get go, my ex didn't technically have anything nice to say either, just neutral on the whole thing.
I think a lot of it is ‘tough love’, they seem to take a one-size-fits-all approach.
Great because it’s cheaper, but worse because the success rate is much lower.
CAMHS truly are a nightmare these days. My kid is dealing with self harm and suicidal ideation (it took three suicide attempts for them to even get a refferal!), in 4 years they had 2 appointments before their worker decided to just not see them anymore because I asked to know more about the approach she wanted to use. Changed area and the local CAMHS won't even see them because they don't meet the threshold. Wondering how many more suicide attempts it will take for CAMHS to decide my child is suffering enough to recieve treatment.
Back when I was younger, I got help after just one episode of self harm, and had consistent support (still inadequate, but it was a while ago) even after when I should have aged out because I got pregnant close to 18 and they didn't want to leave me without support during that time. Honestly breaks my heart how much things have gone downhill since then.
Similar happened to me. I was SA'd in year 9 and developed agoraphobia. CAMHS said I was too severe for them lol. Their 'have a bath and a cuppa tea' was no match for me.
CAMHS is so awful the more you read about it the more depressed you get
So glad you got help. In other countries.... its worse...
I remember breaking down in class 6th-7th grade.
All it did it resulted in more abuse both at home and at school... life is difficult and at least for me it never gets easy
This just proves the 'school system' does not fit all.
It's needs adjustment, however some schools are brilliant with supporting pupils that don't deal well with school all together but it's hard to come by.
It’s always been a lottery, but since they moved to academies - it’s just amplified the disparity further.
I also missed a lot of school from anxiety and was moved to isolation. My last years attendance was 37.5%. I didn't know it was anxiety at the time however, and it was treated as a health issue as I had physical symptoms. The school didn't go after my parents, but had frequent meetings that went nowhere.
Honestly, isolation and missing school had good and bad effects. My grades dropped and I felt very isolated and alone. At the same time I found school terrifying and I hated my schedule, so it provided some relief. I'm not sure what the solution is but I think there should be more support for kids with mental health issues. Especially as they were caused by bullying and the school did nothing.
And what are they going to do with all these kids when their parents are in jail?
To the workhouse with them! Just don't get caught between the machines!
It's more likely that they'll go to a children's home that has annual charges that leave Harrow and Eton in the dust. Councils will be further strained and will be forced to cut back on social services. Only big children's home stands to benefit.
Maybe it's just a thing where I live, but every county I've lived focuses mostly on foster parent care and not children's homes.
I think they do it here where they can. Courts also like to put kids with competent relatives where possible, as I understand it. When that fails it costs ~£250,000 per child per year to put them in a care home. An elite boarding school costs more in the region of £50,000...
Sounds like corruption to me. I'd like to see the breakdown of the costs that make it £250,000 a year for each child. How much do the staff per child cost, how much for the cost of the premises, bills, food etc. What is costing £250,000 a year for each child?
Oh yeah, it's corruption and greed.
the top 20 private children's care homes are generating around £250m per year
https://rangewell.com/care-homes/guides/childrens-care-home-running-costs
A lot of the time when children are absent from school this much, there's other factors at play such as domestic abuse or drugs and alcohol. These children end up in Local Authority care (Such as foster parents). I've seen children thrive in local authority care and it's quite literally saved their lives, but I've also seen local authorities get it very wrong too.
Not all foster parents are equal, and some are specialised to deal with certain things but local authorities are not always the best at choosing which foster parents get which child. Also some local authorities are terrible at follow up support once they put a child in the care of foster parents.
I don't believe it.
The article mentions the police a couple of times, but just a vague idea from someone saying this happens. It's just rumours. No details on these visits and no verification.
If police go around to a house, it is for other reasons, not this.
Put simply: schools don't have the authority to tell the police what to do.
The rage bait is working as intended though
Shame this comment is higher.
Given that the jails are over flowing already this may not be the deterrent that they hope for.
The DfE states in the article that it tells schools to take a support first model and to work closely with families to provide support.
The rest of the article gives a list of reasons why kids are being absent and most of them relate to failings of public services. Mental health issues, lack of disability accommodations, children acting as carers, the list goes on.
So, after gutting the services that keep kids healthy and happy, the government then sets schools an impossible target with extremely high pressure to deliver, with no extra funding to do it, and when they resort to drastic measures, the DfE gets to smile and shrug and say "Well we never told them to do THAT!".
Never forget who the real villains are.
support first model
While at the same time removing headteachers discretion to authorise absence and pressuring Local Authorities to fine the shit out of parents.
The Tories don't know how to deal with anything except with fines and threats. They need to roll back on these regulations and start actually addressing root causes.
They don't want to. All the fines and targets are just a way of appearing to do something while not spending any actual money.
The govt should focus on the parents of children who are SERIALLY absent. These are the parents who can't be arsed getting their kids ready and bringing them into school. This is what the original legislation of fining parents was brought in for.
Waste of Police resources. I don't think for a minute most Poloce forces would agree to do this.
Not necessarily, I never went to school often but it was before the govt was really strict on it at all so was never a problem and I passed my exams so the school didn't care
But it wasn't my parents fault, as far as they knew I went to school rather than actually just going to friends houses or hanging around town or whatever
Twenty five percent of secondary students, now, have under 90% attendance. Which is the government's definition of 'persistently absent.'
I’m a teacher and work specifically in safeguarding.
Schools can’t instruct the police and I’ve never heard of schools reporting families to the police for non-attendance. Schools can’t ’send the police’ anywhere.
But schools regularly have to request welfare checks if a child hasn’t been seen and if parents aren’t communicating with the school. Schools are legally obliged to do this.
If a school has concerns around persistent absence/lack of communication from home, they’ll inform the local MASH (Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub) team.
We can't even get the police to go visit a family we haven't heard from since January. When we go, there is no answer.
I think the police mostly go to the homes of persistently absent children to check that they're not being kept at home to hide the bruises.
Well I'm sure that would only be a nurturing and stabilising development for an absentee child...
I’ve had this problem with my son for ages. It’s been blamed on my parenting with not much help.
It started in junior school where he would refuse to walk.
I would take him to school in a wheelchair.
I was told I couldn’t do that anymore and had to make him walk.
He would walk slowly. It would take him 2 hours to walk a 10-15 min walk.
I went back to the wheelchair again and got told to stop.
His anxiety ramped up. Eventually he refused point blank.
School told me to “do what’s necessary to get him to school”
I put him in a wheelchair screaming and push him ti school screaming.
School gets a report and they report me because I took him to school screaming.
Fast forward secondary school we get 2 weeks support where my son gets a lift to school. He complies. 2 week support stops. He refuses. Takes ages to get out the house.
A few times his phone is dropped off at school. It takes him a month to collect it.
I’m told that I have to get him to school but I can’t force him, shout at him, physically dress him, physically force him out of bed. I can only take his stuff which isn’t effective. I’m now disabled and have mobility problems. He is small man sized so picking him up and physically moving him is impossible. He knows no one can touch him.
He wants to go to school but he says he can’t.
In Japan a system was trialled that I think would have been amazing for your son. It basically uses a robot and a tablet to allow a child to go to school remotely and interact with teachers and pupils.
That sounds rough, I got kicked out of a lot of schools when I was younger and probably would be having a shit life rn if my mum didn’t fight to have me in a school with specialist mental health support.
A girl I knew decided to run away from home at 14 and move in with her piece of shit older boyfriend and stopped going to school.
Her mum got multiple fines and threats of court. Not once did any authority do anything to help get her daughter home. It’s all well and good punishing people but what’s the point of you can’t get any help to fix things.
Should have arrested the boyfriend since he was a paedophile.
You’d think so right?
I will actually defend this.
Kids not attending school can be a serious safeguarding issue. It could be the children are elsewhere, parents are non involved or other serious issues.
It takes a lot for a school to take parents to court. Only when all other courses have been exhausted will this happen. In 15 years in education I have only heard of this happening once.
Yeah, you have to have passed so many steps, multiple fines and be a complete head in sand or ignore every offer of help to reach court.
This has been happening for decades, when I skived school in the 2000s I had such low attendance the police came to my house and my parents ended up in court, it's illegal not to send your children to school. But they were also investigating my welfare.
It's a good thing, education is important and if children aren't going to school there's usually a very good reason why.
It's not like you miss a day and they raid your house. I literally had 3% attendance over 2 years.
I don’t see that the article matches the headline at all.
“…a school attendance officer, or a council welfare officer, or “sometimes the police” turned up and insisted on talking to the child.”
So the police only occasionally go, and it’s likely only when the others aren’t available. Probably because services have been cut to the point where no one else can check on the student but the police. There’s a bit about how ‘many parents’ have claimed there are threats of jail, but no data, no figures or facts. The schools aren’t actually calling the police and telling them to threaten people with prison.
Schools have to report unexplained and persistent absences up to authorities, it’s required under safeguarding. Failing to manage safeguarding is an immediate fail from Ofsted. And the school can’t send teachers around the streets looking for them ffs.
If the school just ignored absent students and it turns out one had been kidnapped or was being abused and no one seemed to think it worth checking out, all hell would come down on them, rightly so.
Had them at next door neighbours for 4 hours the other morning because the kid didn't answer the door and the parents were at work
I love the fact people are blaming the old bill? It’s not the old bill that made this law…….its government. The old bill don’t have a choice?
I guess classrooms aren't disruptive enough this year
"Schools are turning up with community police."
This is literally the only line in the article that mentions police turning up to the homes of children not in school.
By "community police", they almost certainly mean PCSO's, as opposed to warranted Police Constables. These aren't the officers who go around investigating crime, they're the ones who literally exist only for low level stuff such as this.
As for why they're going? It's not going to be to intimidate parents into getting kids into school. The police would only go to this sort of thing in order to carry out a welfare check. The role of the PCSO is to ensure there isn't some kind of issue preventing the kid going to school, such as a household full of Domestic Violence or Sexual Abuse. They aren't there to jail parents for not sending kids to school. If that's what school staff are doing, then it's obviously wrong, but there's no mention in the article of the police taking on that role.
This is a civil issue and should be dealt with by the local authority. Waste of police resources unless something else is happening at home.
So police have time for policing absent students but seemingly not burglaries and violent crime? Sounds about where we are.
Why would a school's liaison officer be going to burglaries and violent crime? Their role is based at the school. It might shock you to learn this, but not all police officers occupy 999 response roles.
Empty threats. Like police turning up at your door for watching dodgey streams
The two assumptions are it’s solely to do with attendance and second, they’re all well-adjusted parents/guardians.
Any lead primary educator and/or TA worth their salt will tell you that outside of the places the wannabe-middle-to-upper-class lot send their progeny to, it’s extremely grim.
Tats to the max mothers and dads hanging around at pick-up time, swearing like merchant marines on shore-leave is just not a good look.
This is hardly anything new. We had the police over once or twice, as well as social services to check on me "skiving", but ultimately I was getting straight A's so they didn't give too much of a shit about it. Just wanted to encourage my parents to encourage me to go in more. My teachers knew I was likely spending my time doing what was better for me anyway. If my grades were shit it probably would have been a bigger issue, but I knew as long as I kept those up no one would stress too hard.
I honestly got far more out of my time and am glad I missed so much school in years 10 and 11 to do what I wanted. School isn't for everyone and I say that now, somewhat ironically, as a teacher.
Here is what I propose.
As soon as a child's attendance is below 85%, schools are no longer held accountable for that child's results.
If attendance falls below 50%, over an extended period of time, schools should have no obligation to keep them on roll - and can give their place to a different child.
From reading the comments on here you'd think:
A) The police are taking cops off of murder investigations to chase up truant kids - they aren't. There are usually dedicated schools officers - I would imagine these are the ones being sent out to deal with this. That's hardly a waste of police resources, the schools officers dealing with a school issue.
B) All children bunking off school have legitimate and significant mental health issues - which again, is nonsense. Plenty of kids bunk off with the parents full permission, because they simply don't value education. We used to do a truancy scheme where I live where a council employee would roam the local city with a uniformed officer (this was pre-cuts) and time and again there'd be kids doing a bit of shopping with mum with no legitimate reason to be off school or some crappy excuse Well she has a dental appointment at 3PM.... - it's 09:30AM though.....?
And to save anyone spoiling for an argument a reply - yes I'm sure there are legitimate cases - I'm making the point that not all the cases of truancy involve a child with a legitimate reason to be off school, which is somewhat the impression I got from reading some of the comments on here.
This certainly isn’t the answer but the problem remains that too many kids are not attending school regularly. My daughter-in-law is a teacher and she sees it regularly.
If the kids won't go after everything else has been tried this seems a logical step
How? If everything has been tried, how will the prospect of somebody else going to jail affect the absentee child?
This has the be BS, police won't turn up when I had my front door smashed in by burglars. Yeah right they are going to attend a parents home.
More likely it to be a community officer with the schools safeguarding officer/head teacher.
Yet let more important things slip. I guess they axed attendance officers?
They did this in Scotland years ago too. I was a notorious lazy cunt and my mum got a threatened a couple times with consequences.
Truancy laws in the US have been doing this for decades.
What the hell have these Tories done to this country?
Our police time's is being wasted on utter rubbish like this!
As many studies have shown, if a child is too anxious to attend school, jailing their parents usually solves everything.
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Police will go threaten parents yet won’t even turn up when my van gets broken into in the middle of the night, all my tools get stolen and my way of paying my mortgage is gone.
Perhaps I’ll have to keep my son out of school for a few weeks next time I get robbed, the police might actually turn up then.