🎩 DISPATCH No. 2025-05-23–OFSTED–SAFEGUARDING-BY-THEATRE
Filed Under: Performative Protection · Procedural Vengeance · Education in Exile
From: Polly Chromatic
Director, SWANK London Ltd.
Flat 22, 2 Periwinkle Gardens, London W2
✉ director@swanklondon.com | 🌐 www.swanklondon.com
🗓 23 May 2025
🏛 Subject:
A Formal Complaint to Ofsted
On the Misuse of Safeguarding to Punish Lawful, Disabled Home Educators
Dear Ofsted,
Permit me to raise what I wish I could call an anomaly, but which appears instead to be an institutional reflex: the abuse of safeguarding frameworks to discipline disabled, law-abiding home educators for daring to conduct their affairs on their own terms.
I am the mother of four children. They are well. They are educated. They are thriving in a home education environment supported by documentation, structure, and what can only be called excellence. And yet — in 2024 and 2025 — I found myself repeatedly surveilled, summoned, and scandalised under the false banner of child protection, for no reason other than my refusal to attend verbal meetings that contravene my medical care plan.
🩺 The “Risk” They Couldn’t Find
Social workers from Westminster and RBKC escalated to CIN and CPP status, not because of risk to children — but because of risk to their authority. Specifically:
I invoked a written-only communication adjustment, clinically mandated and legally protected under the Equality Act 2010.
I declined to perform emotional compliance in person.
I refused the theatre. And for that, the curtain fell — on reason, law, and proportionality.
📚 Misuse in Costume:
Repeated safeguarding referrals despite zero evidence of neglect
Intrusive visits with no pedagogical basis
Harmful interference in learning schedules
Psychological distress induced in my children for the crime of being parented by a disabled adult who keeps immaculate notes
This is not protection. It is harassment in policy drag.
⚖️ What I Ask Of You
That Ofsted formally acknowledge the following:
That safeguarding powers have been misapplied as punitive tools
That disabled home educators face discriminatory escalation for lawful boundary-setting
That local authorities be instructed and regulated accordingly, before the idea of home education is entirely colonised by suspicion
Let this dispatch serve as both a complaint and a chronicle — of what happens when policy is used not as a shield, but as a stick.
Yours in embroidered defiance,
Polly Chromatic
Director, SWANK London Ltd.
Flat 22, 2 Periwinkle Gardens, London W2
✉ director@swanklondon.com
🌐 www.swanklondon.com
⚠ Written Communication Only – View Policy