Thursday 12 November 2009

DCSF ask do i want their reply to my FOIs to be public?

M Stafford

28 July 2009

Dear Sir or Madam,

Please could you supply us with a frequency distribution of the
answers to question 22 of the postal questionnaire and question 51
of the online questionnaire administered to Local Authorities as
part of the Review of Elective Home Education by Graham Badman.

Please report the number of serious case review separately from the
'cover' figures.

Yours faithfully,

M Stafford



M Stafford

27 August 2009


Dear Sir or Madam,

In the Explanatory Note 20 August 2009 released to Shena Deuchars
and Louise Thorn
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ba...
it is stated that ‘* 54 LAs (60%) had one or more cases where there
was some element of safeguarding intervention (over the last five
years).
* In total, 72 cases were notified.’
Please supply the name of the number of children registered with
the 54 LA’s over the last five years in order that I can work out
what percentage of all children 72 is?

Yours faithfully,

M Stafford

the mistake where name was included was rectified in a note.

M Stafford

27 August 2009

Dear Sir or Madam,

In the Explanatory Note 20 August 2009 released to Shena Deuchars
and Louise Thorn
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ba...
it is stated that * Notified of four SCRs (see Annex A for details)
which had an home education element (NB: not including
Birmingham)..’
Annex A does not seem to have been disclosed with this information,
could you please release this annex plus any other documentation
involved in the Badman Review that has not been released?

This should not take you any time at all as you have just released
the Explanatory note and must have it to hand, so any serious delay
will be regarded as obstruction.

Yours faithfully,

M Stafford

 

M Stafford

27 August 2009

Dear Sir or Madam,

In the Explanitory Note 20 August 2009 released to Shena Deuchars
and Louise Thorn
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ba...
it is stated that ‘in one LA, 55% of their EHE children is known to
social care.’
Please supply the name of the LA concerned.

It is also stated that

‘* Two reviews recommended that procedures for monitoring and
supporting all home educated children should be strengthened. The
other two recommended that procedures for monitoring and supporting
home educated children where there are welfare concerns, should be
strengthened.’
Does this mean two review responses or is it referring to previous
reviews, (have there been any) i.e. not the 2009 one?

Please also supply the names of the 6 LAs who claim that the number
of EHE children receiving a suitable education ‘was 50% or under’.
Also the names of the,
‘Two LAs estimated there was no education provision in over 25% of
the children on their caseloads. Four LAs said that there was
education provided in all of their caseloads.’

Yours faithfully,

M Stafford

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/clarification_of_the_data_in_the#incoming-55330

M Stafford

26 October 2009

Dear Sir or Madam,

OK, the working paper which you have released does not anywhere
contain the label Annex A. Could you please clarify which part of
this document is in fact Annex A? Or is the whole working paper
Annex A?

Yours faithfully,

M Stafford

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/a_summary_of_the_answers_to_ques#incoming-55329


M Stafford

26 October 2009

Dear Sir or Madam,

In his submission to the DCSF Select Committee Graham Badman;

a) asserts that his sample for his third survey of local
authorities is representative
(i) does the department agree with this assertion;
(ii) what analysis did the department conduct to verify the
representativeness of this sample;
(iii) please provide copies of relevant analyses and documents.

b) states in paragraph 5 that the figures used in this paper have
been quality assured by a DCSF statistician, please provide details
on what figures were verified and how they were verified.

Yours faithfully,

M Stafford


In answer to  these five Fois, some outstanding since July, we have received the following communication from the DCSF.

Department for Children, Schools and Families

12 November 2009

Dear Ms Stafford

Your FOI request 2009/0074942

The Department intends within the next few days to send you a
communication relevant to your request which, we believe, you may wish
to receive privately. I would be grateful, if this is the case, if you
would respond to me letting me know an email or postal address to which
we should send the communication. I would stress that the Department is
only concerned about your interests here, and would have no objection on
its part to its response being made available on Whatdotheyknow.com if
you so choose.

Please respond to me at my email address:
[email address] . I have sent the same message in
respect of all your current FOI requests to the Department on
Whatdotheyknow.com, but a response in respect of any one of them will
suffice.

Yours sincerely

Andrew Partridge
Information Rights Manager, DCSF

Andrew Partridge is I think the person who wrote to the information commissioner complaining of those naughty powerful home educators harassing and vilifying poor Graham.

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/17150/response/44226/attach/3/Document.pdf dcsf
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/18270/response/54177/attach/3/Copy%20of%20redacted%20DCSF%20letter%20dated%2017709.pdf info comm
Interestingly these are all questions Bruce has asked me to ask as he struggled to understand Badman’s data, are they too much to the point?
What are they going to say about me I wonder that they think I might not want made public.
I wait with bated breath.
Harassment and vilification 

4 comments:

Julie G. said...

The reply I had to my information commisioners request.

Your information request to the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF)



Thank you for your correspondence dated 1 October 2009 in which you complain about the DCSF’s failure to respond to your information request within 20 working days. Please accept my apologies for the delay in responding, which is due to the volume of complaints we are currently receiving.



In this particular case, the Commissioner does not consider that serving a formal decision notice would serve any strong public interest. I have, however, written to the public authority reminding it of its responsibilities. I attach a copy of my letter for your information. Details of the case have also been passed onto our Good Practice and Enforcement team.



As you will see even though the Commissioner does not intend to issue a formal notice in this case, your concerns have been taken seriously. Thank you for bringing this matter to the attention of the Information Commissioner.



This case has now been closed with the delayed response element showing as ‘withdrawn’ on our records. Please contact our Helpline on 08456 30 60 60, or 01625 54 57 45 if you would prefer to call a 'national rate' number, if you require any further assistance.



Yours sincerely,



Jenny Sanders

FoI Case Reception Unit

Information Commissioner’s Office

Kelly said...

Oh, I do wish I were smart enough to understand all this, but it looks brilliant.

Anonymous said...

I have to say that in a so-called "democracy" and what some might consider a "free" society we shouldn't have to be making FOI requests at all.
A review like Badman's which Balls accepts so quickly and so whole heartedly should have ALL the information published up front for scrutiny; that includes cases of apparent abuse. Names can be changed and locations can be with-held but we need to know what happened and whether these cases should be included in stats or not.

I can't see why cases are disallowed when all of us back in my nursing days wrote case studies simply hiding the identity of the patient/client/family. Confidentiality is not broken.

The fact that the DCSF seem so reluctant to hand over basic info and can't answer a straight question might be why they are dealing with such a "volume of complaints..currently."

Shall I laugh or cry?

elizm said...

I'm sad to say that you have taken a gutsy move on this one.
Sad because it simply should not be necessary. There should be no need for guts to request information from the organisations who govern on our behalf.

I'm sure though in standing up you will succeed. You are doing us all a great service

Very best wishes and thanks

Elizabeth Mills

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