Whose responsibility is it to ensure a child is not a child missing education?
It is important that all agencies and practitioners working with children recognise their responsibilities regarding CME and the implications for safeguarding children.
It is the responsibility of every individual to ensure that children are re-engaged back into education provision as a matter of priority. Effective information sharing between parents, schools and local authorities is critical to ensuring that all children of compulsory school age are safe and receiving suitable education.
The cost of not identifying that a child is CME or notifying the appropriate professionals and responding quickly can be very high.
In 2002, a DFES target was set that by 2005, robust multi-agency systems would be in place in each local authority to identify and track children missing education or at risk of doing so. This target was set just prior to the publication of the Victoria Climbie Inquiry Report 2003 (Lord Laming) which recommended that front line staff in each of the agencies which regularly come into contact with families with children must ensure that in each new contact, basic information about the child is recorded. This must include the child’s name, address, age, the name of the child’s carer and the child’s GP.
To support this, the DCSF also required that each local authority has a named individual for children missing from education.
