I have written a couple of times about home educated children in the USA who die in terrible circumstances. Often the common factors in such cases are Christianity and/or adoption. Here is the latest such case and having read this article, it might be helpful to click on the links at the bottom which cover the case in more detail.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/05/after_irvington_suspected_negl.html
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The only reason that this became an HE issue (rather than a social services failure) is that the American HE community lets organisations like the Eagle Forum and the HSLDA represent them as their loudest voice. This makes HE into a party political issue (Home educators are assumed to be Republicans by definition, and social workers who missed this child's abuse are taken to be Democrats).
ReplyDeleteWhen a Deomcratic state senator gets the chance to put HE regulations forward, she will do so, thinking that there is no loss to her (those effected are taken to be Republican voters, and those who would be hurt if social services were blamed for missing this case are taken to be Democrats.)
Eventually, the legislator will be contacted by her own voters who home educate, and whose voices have been drowned out by the screeching of the 'Christian' HE advocacy groups, and the debate will move back to social services management and funding, perhaps with some minimal registration requirements for HE families added in.
Simon - NYCHEA (the New York City HE organisation) might be of interest to you, since you are interested in HE communities that thrive in regulated environments, and NYCHEA is a great example! (There's a reference to NY state HE regulations in the article, which bought that to mind.)