BBC NEWS | UK | Call for action on child exorcismI have just written to the Director of Learning and Culture, since I wish to draw attention to how the Department is implementing the Government's Child Care Strategy on the fifth anniversary of the Climbie Report.
In the news this morning, it is claimed that in London many children are still being violently assaulted by their carers to drive out evil spirits. Something is not being addressed properly there. Is this happening in Oxfordshire?
But in West Oxfordshire, my concern is that developing closer co-operation between agencies concerned with protecting children may be leading to the abuse of the Human Rights of parents.
Perhaps this applies only to C..y School. The head would appear to have lost contact with reality.
I was even more concerned when Radio Oxford put the announcement of the closure into its morning reportage with several people thinking the school was closed again today.
The parents of children at C...y School are very angry about the inappropriate closure of the school yesterday. On Tuesday, a notice outside the school said we should pick up our children as soon as possible if it started to snow. I could get no clarification as to whether we should come in at any time or just on time at the end of the day. The former would be bizarre, the latter just disrespectful to parents, who often wait for ten minutes (recently in the snow) for our children to be released, after 3.00 p.m. Yesterday, I believe ours was the only school in the county closed due to snow. There was no snow here yesterday. The previous day’s snow melted during the day.
The head is not in school today. It is snowing. But the school is open like all the others. There is a clear instruction that we should pick up our children at lunch time if it is snowing heavily by then.
One of my concerns is about the powers of heads to act without reference to supervision or outside advice. The closure of the school yesterday is one consequence of such policies, which I think should be reviewed.
I consider not only was it inappropriate to close down our school yesterday, but it is inappropriate to refer families from our community to a social care investigation without the parents consent. I am aware that the law entitles this to be done when there is an immediate threat to a child. But in this case Social workers, doctors and a health visitor all find this family to be a normal loving caring family, as do friends, who include local politicians.
I have, till now, been utterly perplexed as to why good people would be put through this ordeal. These children function quite normally in classes outside school; scouts, chess club, music lessons, sports clubs, theatre school etc and in my judgement they happy and settled at home.
It has just been pointed out to me this morning one way in which they are different to the norm. Their moral and spiritual values differ strongly from those of evangelical teachers at the school.
I have been a pastoral counsellor for 30 years, and have a friendly relationship with Rowan Williams and his family. I am sympathetic towards liberal minded Christian groups. But I feel misgivings when a teacher starts to punctuate his sentences with "Praise the Lord." I have just discovered that the head has been emphatically recommending a very strongly Christian boarding school to the elder child of this families’ natural father. Further more, the younger child’s teachers are evangelical Christians.
When a teacher starts to mention the Climbie enquiry as a basis for her concerns I have a growing sense of disquiet, which I think should be aired in public.
The concerns I am emphasizing here concern general issues of policy implementation and Parental Human Rights abuse.
I would like the Local Authority to evaluate the implementation of this overall strategy and let me know what emerges.
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