Teething Problems:

We have really appreciated the constructive feedback sent to us, we have updated the website to take into account many of those comments. We would like to try and answer the questions asked of us in many groups, but as many of our team are not in those groups we have been unable to answer everything. We hope this quenches the thirst for answers.

We are a website, run by a group of people new to building websites. We chose an informal and colourful approach which most people like and we have had a considerable amount of brilliant feedback from home educators and non home educators.

The IP address comes up as USA, we believe this is because of the hosting company we use. If anyone with experience and concerns over this would like to use the contact us form on the website to discuss this, we'd welcome your comments.
The owner of the website, is Cheryl Moy. It was her idea, and she, with the rest of the team, put considerable hours into the website. Cheryl does not see herself as being in charge. Everything is discussed and decided on together.

We have a donate button, the money currently stays in a paypal account and we are working to get a bank account. Three of the members have access to the paypal account, but is run by our treasurer who will be producing accounts. Services such as buying the URL, hosting costs and buying the credit card style Ed Free cards are paid for out of the money. Any left over money will stay in the account for next year's fees. 

The Ed Free cards available are as already said on many forums, of a credit card quality with a full print, this is not a cheap option, but we asked a large target audience for their advice and the more expensive option was voted for. We have, as most people would, shopped around and found a very reasonable quote and seen samples of their cards. We are confident we have the best deal. The price people will pay is £2, this will just cover all the costs involved. We will not let the person responsible for posting these cards be out of pocket, so will reimburse expenses.

Prior to going live we asked for donations. The team had already put some money in, we soon raised the money for the hosting fee, but we needed to pay upfront for the cards. We raised more money and we offered that anyone donating over £5 would get a free card since their donation was helping to buy the cards. We have decided to extent this offer to anyone that donated before we offered a free card. Those people should have all been contacted now. please let us know if you haven't had an email. This offer is no longer valid, donations will not in turn mean you get a free card. (as this may not have been clear, we will honour the offer for donations made prior to today 1/9/13). Cards are available to buy at £2, and/or you can make donations. We note that many other Home Education websites and blogs ask for donations, none of which declare themselves as non-profit, we note with keen interest that no one has a problem with this. We are a non-profit organisation, trustees will take no wage or profit from the website.

We are currently not a charity, discussions on this have taken place, ideally we will become a CIO, our chair, Liz Jenkins, is taking time to research our options before we commit. We chose not to register as a small charity as this can affect applying for CIO status, so we are taking our time to assess our options. We had named ourselves as chair, treasurer, secretary, president and trustees (now committee), we are not 'officially' a charity, but we are setting ourselves the same rules as would be expected of us. We hold meetings regularly and all members of the team are invited and minutes are produced.

There have been some concerns that the map has included links to groups that had not given permission, we did contact many groups who willingly allowed us to link to their group, many of which are not searchable on the internet. Groups that are easily found in google searches (with terms like “home education London”) were added without asking permission. We have added a disclaimer next to the map, explaining that we have no affiliation with these groups, which we don't. The map was created with goodwill as a resource for families wishing to find their local group. If you want any groups added to the map, please use the contact form on the website. We will be making updates on a weekly basis.

Concerns were raised that we were selling clothing at a more expensive price than going direct to the company. You will find, if you click on a tshirt on the seller's website, that it gives you an option to add the backprint. This adds a cost. We had limited space and wanted to include the tshirts with the backprint. After discussions with the owner of the company, she explained that the higher rate of sales came from those with the reverse print. So we are selling them at exactly the same price. We receive a small percentage of the sales. Which was a lovely gesture from the owner of the company.

It has been asked which facebook group we are linked to, we link people to the 'UK Home Education Group' there are groups, set up after this group, with very similar names, we have no affiliation with those, the FB group name can not be changed due to having nearly 1800 members, but for clarity it is the only group with the word group in the title, hopefully this avoids any more confusion.

Finally we have released an apology to Schoolhouse, in amongst the long hours, we accidentally included information that had come directly from their website. We have removed their content, any Scottish information is now fully in our words, we welcome feedback from Schoolhouse and any other organisation, through our contact us form.

If you have any more concerns, questions or general feedback, please use the contact form on the website. It is only fair that all members of the team have access to the questions being asked, and it means that the appropriate member of the team will be able to answer the question directly and more quickly. It will be made clear in the email correspondence as to which member of the team is replying.

Hope this helps answer some of your questions.
The Educational Freedom Team