Our journey

I first noticed something was very different for my son in Reception class, dismissed by the teacher, I was still raising concerns in year 5 and 6, who is high IQ, excellent reader as it happens, despite being dyslexia and masked heavily. If only I had known then, what I do now.

At that time he was a really sociable and well liked by his peer group and adults alike. By year 5 they were being kept in at lunchbreaks for not achieving good enough marks in spelling, this only go worse. He chewed through about 1 jumper sleeve a week, was getting more and more distressed about School and tried making excuses not to go.

I was put on Child Protection in the space of 9 days in July 2019 , after DfE upheld my complaint about the head teacher of my child’s secondary school in year 7, having been advised to make the complaint by the Director of SS now Rutland CC Chief Exec, the Council had also agreed to assess my son for an EHCNA the month before as they were in receipt of the dyslexia diagnosis, hyper mobile joint diagnosis and visual stress diagnosis , however the head retaliated to my complaint being upheld against them, by reporting me for harm to my child, emotional abuse, saying I was emotionally abusing them by telling them they had needs that they did not have (untrue of course and part diagnosed at the time) to Rutland CC Social Services .

The day the Social worker tuned up at school and interviewed my child, they took away my son forever in terms of personality, he has never recovered from this. My son was also awaiting CAMHS for further assessment as the dyslexia specialist suggested potential ADHD and Autism assessment. We had to sell our home to get away from the local authority, I lost all of my clients as I was self-employed and it made me too ill to work, my partner lost his job due to us being placed on the child protection register. We then had a 5 year further fight to get full assessment.

I have full hard evidence of everything I speak of, along with hard evidence which refutes every allegation made. In the end I took on debt to get a well known solicitor who made it stop with one letter, but not until the Council and School had created life long trauma for me, my child and destroyed my family, ripping us apart.

This journey is noted by the psychiatrist to have caused mental damage to my son, who is high IQ. It destroyed us mentally, physically and financially. He never did get help and support until college. He is now also diagnosed Autistic and ADHD. My counsellor at time said I now have PTSD.

It has caused:

Lifelong mental damage for my son ( as noted by the psychiatrist who diagnosed Autism and ADHA), they are now filled with trauma and anxiety.
Physical damage due to it triggering arthritis for me, long term financial damage and PTSD.
It caused my partner to become so distressed we have now divorced.

I wish the authorities had:

Abided by the law, in particular the CFA 2014, Human Rights Act and Disability Rights Act. Assessing my child in Reception Year instead of being dismissive and actually teaching staff making decisions they were not qualified to make. The social worker actually ignored red flags that my child made about their father (we were long divorced when the Child Protection started ) and their step mother – my son had not wanted to stay with his dad for several years overnight due to how he was treated there, this was used against us and they encouraged the father to say I was abusing my child , when if fact it was the reverse of that . Had the SW acted lawfully, my son and I would have been protected.

One piece of advice I would give:

To recognise that on the whole parents and carers are the people who know their children best. To ensure judgements and diagnosis are only be made by those qualified to do so. A truly child centred , multi agency approach, that is fit for purpose and led by one key person co-ordinating. Full transparency and all meetings to be video recorded and shared at the end, body cams for all social workers. Introduce individual accountability.

This report on Systems Generated Trauma is so important because:

We must not give up the aim of having our voices heard and acted upon…because people , children and adults do take their lives…at best the systems generated trauma is causing lifelong mental health damage, physical health damage and financial damage. It is a living nightmare that you cannot fully recover from.