From: http://www.newsfromnowhere.org.uk/XmasPoem.pdf

Have a lovely break this Christmas, with the children home to play,

Get together with your family, and enjoy it while you may.

The times we spend with children will soon be regulated

With all details fully recorded, countersigned and dated.

We don’t protect our young enough, or their friends who come to play,

We must consider every adult that they might meet today.

If they see our children once a month, then perhaps they can’t be trusted?

We need to check the records, to see if they’ve been busted.

Most of them will not have been - does that mean they’re OK?

I’d rather trust my children, and what *they* think and say.

And now the state think I’m not safe, that I might neglect my own

Simply because I made the choice to educate at home.

They think I need to be assessed, and ask permission every year

To fulfil my parenting duty (for which I gave up my career)

They say they’re worried if they don’t know where my children are each day,

And can’t speak to them alone to check I’m doing what I say

They want me to leave my child of 7 in a room with a total stranger

Even she can clearly see that this itself is the biggest danger

If there are no grounds for concern, of abuse or other risk

Then please don’t come in here with your insulting tick-box list

Don’t routinely require that parents must prove their innocence

Please wake up, smell the coffee, and get back to common sense!

Please sign our urgent petition

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Home-ed-families/