What does "discuss changes to education with social services" mean?

[bayescr]

Long story short, we have a child in an interim care and that interim care order will be changed to an interim supervision order soon, so the local authority will no longer have parental responsibility. We are currently drafting and negotiating on an agreement between the parents and local authority about things going forward.

There is one sentence that I am concerned about, which reads "the parents will discuss any possible changes to the child's education with the local authority".

Firstly, we simply don't want them to have a say in the child's school and education.
Practically, we plan to change school soon, which the authority will surely oppose, so we don't want to leave any room for the authority to block our plan.

It does say "discuss", rather than "agree with", "gain approval from", etc, but "discuss" connotes a two-way conversation and does imply some form of agreement. We want to change it to some 1-way wording like "notify" or "inform".

As it is, what if we just change school and then notify the local authority? The child is living at home, it is not like they can take the child away into foster care. But the proceedings are ongoing, so we don't want to hamper future progress.

Any advice please.

[Suzie, FRG Adviser]

Dear Bayescr,
Thank you for your post. I am Suzie, an online adviser for Family Rights Group responding to you today.

Supervision orders are made under section 31 of the Children Act 1989. For a court to make a supervision order, the threshold criteria must be met. The court must be satisfied the child is at risk of significant harm and that this is a result of the care being given at home, or the child being beyond the parents’ control. Unlike a care order, a supervision order does not give parental responsibility to children’s services.

Children’s services can ask the court to attach directions to the supervision order, and this could possibly include directions about educational choices. Any directions requested would focus on any areas of concern.

I would advise you to talk about what is meant by "the parents will discuss any possible changes to the child's education with the local authority" with the social worker, the children’s guardian and your solicitor, to gain clarity on what is meant by discussion in this context. You should be fully aware of the local authority’s concerns would be about the school choice you wish to make ( as you predict that they would object.) Your solicitor would be best placed to talk to you about any scope that you have for disagreement on school choice.

Please follow this link for detailed information about supervision orders from the Family Rights Group website here.
I hope this was helpful.

Best wishes,
Suzie