Child cruelty case triggers call for home schooling review
Child protection experts have called for a national review of home schooling following an inquiry into a case in which a violent stepfather and his partner subjected their young son to extreme neglect and abuse.
The boy – known as Child Ab – endured four years of cruelty including being beaten, locked in his room and forced to defecate on the floor, fed stale food and banned from speaking to his siblings.
He was taken into care in 2016. His parents, a 34-year-old man and a 36-year-old woman were convicted of five counts of child cruelty last May, and jailed for seven and three years respectively.
An official serious case review published on Wednesday by the Northamptonshire Safeguarding Children Partnership, found significant failures by social workers and NHS staff who it said had missed early chances to remove the boy.
“Fortunately, in this case, Child Ab did not die. If children’s social care and police had not acted when the school passed on the concerns arising from disclosures by Child Ab’s siblings, then the outcome could have been very different,” the review said.
“However, by not instigating child protection procedures when previous referrals had been made to children’s services Child Ab was left to endure continuing neglect and serious abuse for years.”
It highlighted the controlling and manipulative nature of the stepfather, who singled out Child Ab for acts of “extreme cruelty,” while seemingly treating the boy’s other siblings differently. Although he had no parental responsibility, safeguarding professionals failed to challenge him on this, the review found.
The stepfather took total control of decisions regarding Child Ab between 2012, when he entered the family, and 2016, refusing to engage with professionals, not taking him to health appointments, and effectively cutting the child’s mother out of any communication with the school and social workers.
The boy’s mother, the review found, “abdicated her responsibilities and duties as a parent” to the stepfather.
Although at one stage Northamptonshire county council social services set up a Child in Need plan, it closed the file after three months after deciding there were no concerns for the child’s welfare.
The review states: “Within weeks of closing the case, Stepfather made professionals aware of his intention to electively Home Educate Child Ab. These decisions resulted in Child Ab not being seen by any professional for over a year. In effect, child Ab was hidden from view and the abuse perpetrated by Stepfather, with a lack of protection by Mother, continued.”
However, Child Ab was never home educated as his stepfather never submitted an application form. This resulted, the review says, “in the child being out of school, effectively out of sight for a period of 14 months”. Attempts by the school to get the forms completed appear to have been rebuffed.
The review recommended that national plans in regards to home educated children should be reviewed, and that more resources should be made available to assess and monitor children who are taken out of school to be educated at home.
The report states: “Whilst it is currently a parent’s right to elect to home educate their child, the sanctions for not complying with the local authority requirement to visit the child’s home, interview the child, see the child’s work and provide information concerning the programme of work produced by the child, are limited.”
Northamptonshire county council’s cabinet member for children’s services, Cllr Fiona Baker, said: “We are deeply sorry for any poor decision making and mistakes which may have contributed to this awful case of abuse. Children’s Services in Northamptonshire are on an improvement journey and although much progress has been made there is still a lot to do.”
The case is the third high profile serious case review in recent years involving Northamptonshire county council children’s services.
Last year two reports found that professionals missed crucial opportunities to save two toddlers who were murdered by men with histories of domestic violence, crime and drug use.
