The Children’s Wellbeing Bill

They want a register. They want to know where my children are. As if the system that failed them in school can be trusted to monitor them out of it.

The Children’s Wellbeing Bill. That’s what they’re calling it. Wellbeing. As if wellbeing is something the government can legislate into existence. As if ticking a box on a register protects a child. As if the same system that missed the abuse I suffered as a kid and the misery my children suffered at school is now qualified to oversee their education.

My children were drowning in that system. SEND kids in a mainstream school that didn’t have the resources or the will to accommodate them. Kids who learned differently being told they were difficult. Kids who needed space being crammed into classrooms with thirty others and a teacher who had fourteen minutes of SEND training and a prayer.

I pulled them out. And they flourished. Not gradually. Immediately. Like plants moved from concrete to soil. They ate again. They talked again. They laughed at the table again.

And now someone in Westminster wants to put them on a register. Wants to check. Wants to make sure. Wants to ensure that the education I’m providing meets a standard set by people who have never met my children and have no idea what they need.

I am not against safeguarding. I am against the assumption that a parent who chooses to educate at home is a risk. I am against a system that failed my children claiming the authority to assess whether I’m doing a better job.

I am.

The evidence is in their faces. In their voices. In the questions they ask now that they didn’t ask when they were too anxious to speak. In the books they read and the things they build and the confidence that grows a little more every day that they’re not sitting in a classroom being told to be quieter.

Register us if you want. But know this. The register won’t tell you what I know. That my children are safe. That my children are learning. That my children are happy.

And that happiness didn’t come from the system.

It came from leaving it.