Khyra Ishaq: the death of a home educated child
On 17 May 2008, Khyra Ishaq, a seven year old girl, died tragically. Ten weeks previously, according to statements made by the local MP, she and five siblings had been withdrawn from school in Handsworth, Birmingham because of bullying over Muslim dress. Since then the children had been home educated. They had recently been visited by an education social worker.
When the emergency services found the children they were emaciated and living in squalor. They were taken to hospital, where Khyra died. The mother and step-father, Angela Gordon and Junaid Abuhamza, have since been charged with neglect.
According to comments from neighbours, the children looked healthy and happy, although in recent months they had appeared to be losing weight. The mother seemed caring and conscientious. She let the children play out of doors but kept an eye on them. They had not been seen recently, but the neighbours assumed that the family had moved house, so this had not caused concern. (How do six children and their parents suddenly become unheard and invisible, in a small terrace house?)
There is a garbled story about the children stealing bread put out for birds. What may have happened is that the mother very recently accused a neighbour of giving the children bread. The neighbour denied this but suggested that they might have taken some from her bird table.
The MP, Khalid Mahmood, publicly criticised the way the authorities behaved, but his comments, made in advance of a full investigation, may have been premature and unduly inflammatory. Gross neglect does happen, sometimes incomprehensibly, but in this case we do not yet know enough to make judgments.
Whatever went wrong, though, this was not primarily an educational problem. When child neglect takes place, it is likely to result from a combination of psychological predisposition and practical circumstances. If a carer suffers an acute mental health crisis, will there be a partner who understands what is going on, can provide suitable support, and knows where to start getting help? Will the extended family or the community find out about the situation, or will it be kept secret through panic and despair? If the family run out of money, will they know where to turn? These events cannot always be prevented by legislation, although they may be affected by the availability of resources. In a sense, society as a whole may be at fault if it fails to relieve poverty or to give adequate support to communities and to young parents.
Whether or not (s)he was in any way culpable, the ESW who visited this family must be well supported. The mixture of guilt that one may be in some way to blame for the death of a child, of fear that one will be scapegoated, and of anger that so many unjust comments are being made, has been enough in earlier cases to make caseworkers ill. Formal investigations usually take a long time to report, and the stress is intolerable.
Contrary to the hysterical claims that are being made, the local authority may have acted appropriately: the problem may, for instance, not have developed far enough to be readily perceived when the ESW visited. (S)he may have gone back to the office to consult, with no grounds for thinking that a crisis was escalating so rapidly. The ESW’s case-load may have been too great for as many visits to have been made as would have been ideal. It may be that some people will be found to have been negligent, but we should not pre-empt the outcome of the enquiry. There will always be unforeseeable accidents and unpredictable tragedies, and sometimes no-one is to blame.
What questions should be asked?
The natural father, Ishaq Abu Zaire, says he feels let down by the authorities. He complains that they are responsible for the tragedy because they did nothing. Is there some incongruity in his comments? He has been abroad and has not seen the children for a year. What has he been able to do for his children, with regard to contact, maintenance and shared responsibility? Are the problems of getting fathers to pay for the support of their children relevant to this case? Why has the government not taken action to achieve this more effectively through the tax system? How much money was coming in for this family each week?
Where is the rest of the extended family? Grandma has left a toy dog in the garden, with a note to Khyra that she will be missed. Were the extended family out of contact and unable or unwilling to support such a large family with such young parents? Angela was a convert to Islam: had that caused family tension? A young aunt says she visited repeatedly but no-one answered the door. Did she try to phone?
What was the position with regard to phones, either mobiles or land lines? Had the school and LA tried to phone? Was the number unobtainable? If so, was this considered significant? Land lines being cut off is always a danger signal that a family may be nearing crisis.
Had the family received any support from their religious community? Were there racial issues for a Jamaican woman coming into the Muslim community? Is there a need for the elders of mosques to be encouraged to care for women and children as well as for men, and to provide better pastoral care as well as religious education?
Were there drug problems fuelled by, or fuelling, the other problems? Was money draining away before food was bought? Were the parents malnourished, and perhaps even failing to think clearly because they were suffering from chronic starvation? Had gas and electricity been cut off – another warning sign? Did anyone ask? The youngest child was only four. What do the Health Visitor’s files show about this family? Did they have a GP? What do the GP’s files show about this family? What other safety nets can we provide for families in this sort of crisis?
What did the school do to stop the bullying? We know that many schools have an anti-bullying policy which is meaningless in practice. Does the head teacher acknowledge that bullying sometimes happens in all schools – that the question is whether school policy and ethos can stop it quickly? Was she prepared to nip it in the bud? How, exactly? What actually happened to complaints, in the view of parents and children? What was the head’s own attitude to Muslim dress? It appears that in this context this means a hijab. This is very familiar in Birmingham; would it cause more comment at school than could be resolved by a firm lead from the head, reinforced as necessary by the class teacher? Was there really bullying, or was this a way of the children telling their mother they did not want to wear the hijab?
Had the school had concerns about these children, and passed them on? Had the school noted any deterioration in the care of the children? Had the school noticed and reported their weight loss? This seems to have been obvious to neighbours. It was the one objective sign of neglect, that could have been picked up, and the school was in the best position to do so because they saw the children over an extended period. Were they getting free school meals? If so, and if they were still losing weight, being withdrawn from school should have caused anxiety about their nutritional status. Was the ESW informed? Many children are thin and healthy, and an ESW might not see anything wrong in a single visit, but growing children should not consistently lose weight.
However, schools exist primarily to educate children. It may be difficult for them to provide what amounts to social supervision, especially when they have no powers and resources to lessen poverty and deprivation. What support was available to the school, from school medical and nursing staff, the education welfare service, and social workers?
Was the school understaffed? Did the children each have a permanent year teacher who knew them well, or was the school running on supply staff? Had their teachers expressed safeguarding concerns? If so, had these been followed up?
Did the ESW visit because the children had been formally withdrawn from school, or because of other concerns? If the ESW was linked to the school, was the LA involved at all? If the ESW was not linked to the school, this suggests that the school had informed the LA that the children were being withdrawn, as they are required to do under the Pupil Registration Regulations 2006. This would have given the LA the chance to make its own checks. Perhaps more than one ESW was involved. If so, did they liaise? Did they discuss the family before and after the visit?
If, as appears, the ESW’s visit took place in connection with elective home education (EHE), what contacts were offered with other home educators? What community resources were suggested? What training had the ESW had to understand the issues and support home educators? Were the family managing to attend group meetings and activities, perhaps with other home educators? Were they getting out locally to the park and library, and playing with friends, rather than being shut in the house all day and every day? It seems likely that these things were not happening, or were no longer happening by the time of the visit. The ESW might have been in a position to report on this.
We are increasingly hearing how brilliantly supportive some LA staff are becoming: does that apply in this area? What concerns were expressed in the report of this home visit? Presumably the emaciation and squalor had not reached a level that made immediate action necessary, but it is hard to believe that there were not some grounds for concern by that time. How qualified and experienced was the ESW? What was his/her case-load? Did (s)he have time, training and expertise to assess the situation adequately? What support did (s)he receive from his/her line managers? Why did (s)he not involve social services and environmental health? Was the education welfare service understaffed?
If the situation deteriorated rapidly, a visit just before this deterioration might have missed conclusive signs, but it should still have raised intuitive concerns in anyone sufficiently experienced. In this case befriending the family might have revealed any crisis, or it might have prevented it. Repeated visits should have enabled an ESW to see the children’s weight loss, and involve medical services. Or the mother might have disclosed that she did not have enough money to feed them, and received emergency help. Or she might have focused enough to buy food and pull the situation back. And so on.
Considerable sums of money follow each child within the school system. Home educating parents often complain that they are saving the country huge sums, especially when their children have special needs, and that some of this money should come to them. LA's also complain that no funding comes to them for EHE. Most families do very well with minimal support/interference from authority, and do not want this changed. But a case like this one shows that, just occasionally, the LA responsibility can be enormous.
There are sometimes fears among LA staff that they do not have sufficient powers to prevent such danger to EHE children, particularly in the light of the extra responsibility imposed by Every child matters. This is untrue. They have the legal powers they need, but they must also have access to commensurate resources.
Case law states that "although as a general rule an education authority should not, as a matter of policy, insist on inspection in the home as the only method of satisfying themselves that children [are] receiving efficient full time education, there [are] cases in which the authority [is] entitled to insist on such inspection" (R v Surrey Quarter Sessions Appeals Committee ex p Tweedie 1963). Responsible home educators, like LAs, do not want EHE to be misused to hide neglect and abuse. As long as LAs do not use this ruling oppressively, they will have their support.
In this case there were obvious signs to justify closer scrutiny than is usually necessary when a family home educates. In fact, the ESW visited with no argument from the family, and could easily have said (s)he would look in again in a few days to see how they were getting on, perhaps to bring them some books or information, repeating this until the situation became clear. Such support need not be oppressive if there turned out to be no problem. If the parents had argued against visits, there were grounds in this case to warn them that the alternative was an SAO or referral to social services.
As with all these cases, what is needed is not a change in the law, but staff with the capacity, resources and support to do what they are already supposed to do. It is not enough for government to keep telling LAs what they should be doing. The enquiry should ask whether government priorities over spending actually make this possible.
Education Everywhere May 2008
