My complaint to the BBC

I complained to the BBC on their reporting of the Kyra Ishaq case.
I had now sent this complaint about their reply!

Thank you for replying to my complaint about this article. I am, however, still unhappy.
Your reply states that the article looked at interventions that may have saved Kyra Ishaq's life - it did not. It devoted more than half it's column inches to discussing proposals for monitoring home educators, proposals which would have done nothing to save this child's life as in this case the family were visited by the LA and the child was seen by the officer but nothing was picked up. The proposed changes to the law do not introduce anything that this officer could have used to improve this child's chances of life, they simply give more powers to send a child back to school (which would not have helped her as she was already extremely ill prior to being taken out of school and the school's repeated attempts to get social services involved failed) and to increase levels of control the LA has over educational provision. The education welfare officers do not have powers to remove a child, they can only follow the same path as the schools - report concerns to social services - and the proposed changes to home education law not only do not alter this but do nothing to provide for extra training for such officers either in the area of home education or in the area of checking safe-guarding concerns. Therefore, the disproportionate amount of space given to this bill in the article was unwarranted.
Not only this, but no other proposals or ideas were explored ie. would the mother have coped better had she had access to things like respite care or a place to go to meet other families with special needs children? Or if she had access to help for her own food fixation via an NHS diet service? Would social services have responded better if they still had the Child Protection Register to aid them? Better training? Social workers manning the phones rather than laymen? To write an article that claims to explore all the possibilities then focus on one minor one while excluding all others is TERRIBLE reporting. Neither were the very real powers the social services already have - powers that could have saved the child had they been exercised properly once social services had recieved the school's phonecalls. It was the failure of social services to act on concerns over the family and the apparent lack of understanding by the social worker involved in the case of her own right of access to the child that was cited as THE reason this child died and two others came close in the court cases this case led to - NOWHERE in the article was this mentioned, let aslone discussed. This meant the piece was grossly unbalanced and highly biased, coming across as government propoganda, not serious journalism.

Your reply also states that home education was a factor in the case, which is why so much space was given to it. Home education was a factor for two minor reasons only; !) The mother's decision to remove her children from school was the trigger that decided the school to contact social services - despite having serious concerns before this, they only got in touch once the child was no longer where they could see her every day. Had they got in touch earlier things might just have turned out differently (though this is very much a long shot). Had the child remained in school, there is a good chance social services would not have been contacted for some time as the school tried to work with the family itself while the child's health deteriorated further, so in effect the decision to home educate could have been the thing that saved Kyra - had social services responded appropriately to the repeated calls from the school.
2)Social services, because 'home education' was mentioned, chose to ignore, or confuse, the welfare concerns which the school was reporting and instead took the view that an education, not a welfare, issue was the root of the problem and decided that it was the educational welfare officers problem. This shows a tremendous lack of understanding of the situation on the part of social services as the school was reporting serious problems like dramatic weight loss, stealing food and a concerning change in the mother's personality and behaviour, yet it appears that because home education was mentioned, social services assumed this to be the grounds for the school's concerns. Here, home education was a factor, but it should not have been. Social services should take any concern of the type the school was making seriously no matter what the educational or cultural background. They should not simply 'pass the buck' to education welfare, whose powers (both now and in the children, schools and families bill) do not extend to putting in place safeguarding measures to deal with a child's health and safety but deal only with the child's learning environment. (There are also some major concerns about the way that the education welfare officer who visited the family carried out his task - he appeared to either not know the children were special needs, in which case he was acting in ultra vires by demanding a visit and educational plan, -current law states that the family may choose what method they employ to engage with the LA who may only ask for educational information if they believe there might be problems - rather than have a particular one demanded of them, or he did know in which case he was right to make immediate enquiries as the LA has a duty to ensure statemented children are recieving the assistance their needs demand but should not have signed them off as he did as he had not recieved the mother's plan detailing how she intended to accomodate those needs. Either way, something was not right in the way this man worked in this case - it appears to be a situation of an over-worked official with too many cases for one person to deal with - and giving him more powers would not have improved his ability to understand or give him the time to implement them) Back to social services, nor should they be so poorly trained that they are unaware of they powers they have to carry out their own job. The social worker had the power to insist on seeing the child alone and assessing her. She had the power to check the child's school and the schools the other children attended to ask if they had any concerns, and the power to make inquiries of neighbours, doctors etc. Her task, on recieving such a serious complaint, should have been to visit the family and make an initial assessment immediately. None of this was done. It is known that social services in general, and Birmingham in particular, are extremely over-stretched and things like the abolition of the Child Protection Register and other new legistlation have made their jobs much harder and more confusing.
None of these factors were touched on in the article, yet they played the biggest role in her death. The one factor that was no real barrier to social services doing their job was the one the article was written about.
You claim the article does not take sides. I beg to differ, it is biased in the EXTREME. One truncated line of quote from a home educator does not balance out half an article of quotes from people in favour of the changes to home education law. No quotes were taken from Social Workers in other areas for their views on the case, as I have previously said the article made no attempt to look at any other factors besides home education despite the title, which made it appear that home education was the sole reason these children were suffering whereas the truth is much more complicated and concerned a huge variety of factors most of which had a far more important role to play (in fact court transcripts show that the argument that home education was involved was dismissed as being incidental in the case)
The fact that none of these other, major factors are even mentioned - mother's state of mind, partner's terrible background that he effectively replayed within the family, school's holding off reporting their concerns (one school was so concerned the teacher arranged special treatment for the child attending to be fed larger portions at lunch time and to be watched closely for injuries, yet they do not appear to have reported to social services, Kyra's school waited until the children were withdrawn before reporting their concerns), social services inadequate response to serious concerns, their attempt to let education welfare deal with it and their inability to understand their own powers to deal with such a situation, the inability of the policewoman who visited expressly to see the child to pick up on the state of her health when she was brought to the door and the education welfare officer's inability in fact and in law to do a social worker's job, meaning he too did not spot problems when he saw the child (and had no power to do anything other than report it himself had he picked up on it) plus his inadequacies in his own task which led to a family with statemented children being signed off as 'providing adequate education' without the right checks being made on their ability to deal with the special needs - let alone explored to the extent they deserve, makes this an attack on the homwe educating community, NOT a balanced report that does not take sides.
The outcome is that anyone who reads this will assume that home education was THE reason this child was unable to be saved, assume that no mistakes or other factors were involved and everyone involved behaved perfectly but were prevented from carrying out their jobs by the current home ed. laws. It in fact presents a LIE to the public, people who look to the BBC to tell them the truth about subjects they know little of. Your handling of this case, in this article and elsewhere, pushes a false belief on them.
If you wish to see articles that truly reflect the realities of this case, may I direct you to the Birmingham Mail, where a number of articles have been written detailing the facts of the case, including this one : http://www.birminghammail.net/news/birmingham-news/2010/03/05/labour-councillors-back-calls-for-khyra-ishaq-inquiry-97319-25966662/
Their reporting puts yours to shame.