Police crackdown on truanting children

9:00am Friday 15th March 2013 in Echo News

POLICE have been carrying out 100 home visits a week to parents of truanting children as part of a new crackdown.

They have also been searching for children who are ‘bunking off’ in the Southend area and taking them straight back to school.

The initative has been running in conjunction with the Integrate Youth Support Service. (IYSS)

Insp Brad Dickel, of Leigh police, said: “It’s a very relevant piece of work being done because if these individuals aren’t at school what are they doing and how vulnerable are they, what activities are they taking part in and who are they associating with?’’

In the first two weeks of February, police made 264 home visits, of these just 77 parents or carers were at home to speak with.

The rest will receive follow-up visits and contact with the IYSS. Twelve children were returned to school after being found truanting.

Comments(10)

perini says...
9:11am Fri 15 Mar 13

Why is it down to the Police to track down kids bunking off school? With the ever present funding cuts and dilution of services surely their time would be better spent tracking down criminals and making our streets safer? Absolute waste of OUR money!

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supermadmax says...
9:30am Fri 15 Mar 13

I don't blame the police, its not their fault that their bosses are instructing them to waste time rather than fight crime.

I'm sure they would prefer to be doing real police work.

I thought the point of the plastic coppers / Community Support Officers was to tasks like this?

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Not A Native says...
11:02am Fri 15 Mar 13

264 home visits - lets say each takes one man hour including identification, travel, visit and paperwork (and I suspect I'm guessing on the low side here), so well over 1.5 man months of effort has achieved the return to school of 12 truants. Let's say that on average, if they are returned at lunchtime then the police have rescued 6 pupil-days of school time for their efforts.

All in all, I think it their time may have been a little more usefully employed.

Lets also think that the truanting kids are more likely to be disruptive when at school than the ones who choose to attend and the presumed 'gain' of 6 pupil-days might even become a net loss for the other kids.

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Alice in Her Own Land :P says...
11:29am Fri 15 Mar 13

What happened to truant officers that were employed for this purpose? There are always children of all ages about - if all Teacher Training days at all schools or whatever they are called were all on the same days, then people would know if the children were genuinely on a day off or bunking. We never had all those in our day, and we all survived!

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emcee says...
1:11pm Fri 15 Mar 13

What an utter, utter waste of police resources. The local authority should be providing truant officers to do this menial task.

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hoppie says...
3:05pm Fri 15 Mar 13

Send out fixed penalty notices to parents unless a valid reason given to off school. Parents would then know when their child has bunked off.

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Nebs says...
4:32pm Fri 15 Mar 13

Make the parents attend with persistent truants, to make sure their offspring remain on the premises.

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RobertFS says...
6:39pm Fri 15 Mar 13

i cannot believe that police time is spent on this. what about these 'pretend' police - why can't they do this (BTW - no disrepect but i don't know what to call these non police)
where's the truant officer.
get the police back on the beat. and i mean the beat, not swanning around in cars looking for people speeding butlooking for burglary, thugs, drugs etc

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Carnabackable says...
2:56pm Sat 16 Mar 13

perini wrote:
Why is it down to the Police to track down kids bunking off school? With the ever present funding cuts and dilution of services surely their time would be better spent tracking down criminals and making our streets safer? Absolute waste of OUR money!
Idiot, it's an offence to stop your child attending school, hence the Police now having their time wasted by these errant parents.
Start with some hefty fines, and remove those kids to a special school, inform social services of their inability to look after these children, stop their child benefits, they will soon learn...

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perini says...
12:22pm Mon 18 Mar 13

Carnabackable wrote:
perini wrote: Why is it down to the Police to track down kids bunking off school? With the ever present funding cuts and dilution of services surely their time would be better spent tracking down criminals and making our streets safer? Absolute waste of OUR money!
Idiot, it's an offence to stop your child attending school, hence the Police now having their time wasted by these errant parents. Start with some hefty fines, and remove those kids to a special school, inform social services of their inability to look after these children, stop their child benefits, they will soon learn...
Retard - check your facts - It is NOT an offence to stop your child attending school - ever heard of 'home education?' Try checking out the Government web-site! Fool!

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