In December 2016, the children and I moved from Swindon to Cheltenham. At that time, my son S had already been excluded from schools in Swindon and was attending a special school. Despite his difficulties beginning two years earlier, no EHCP process had been started.

As soon as we arrived, I contacted Gloucestershire County Council (GCC). I knew the process would not be easy—and it certainly wasn’t. S’s caseworker asked us to apply for in-year admission to mainstream schools, even though they had already been made aware of his situation. Little care was given to his individual needs. I was told I would need to wait 20 weeks for the EHCP process to be completed.
For six months, I travelled daily from Cheltenham to Swindon so S could continue attending school there. During this time, I received no financial help, yet I was still working, caring for his sister, and managing the exhausting routine. S had to wake up very early and return home late each day—something that made things even harder for him.

After six months, with still no decision, I began contacting whoever I could. Eventually, a temporary place was found for S at St George’s. Despite reports from Swindon clearly showing that mainstream education did not work for him, GCC maintained that S should attend a mainstream school. This meant the council would contact schools, each of which refused, and I, as a parent, was told I must choose a school and that school would be “made” to have S. It was a demoralising process and not a positive start for him. Ultimately, Greatfield Park was chosen.

In 2018, S started at Greatfield Park. This placement did not last long. After receiving an EHCP that outlined his difficulties with social communication, St George’s had advised that S should not be left unattended during breaktimes, as this was when he was most vulnerable. Despite this, one day his one-to-one support left him unsupervised at lunchtime to deal with another incident, as no other staff were available. Left alone, S quickly became distressed and attempted to fight anyone who came near him. Other children had to run into the school to get help from staff. Following this incident, S was excluded.

During the exclusion process, two teachers came to our home, entered S’s room, and attempted to force him to apologise. When he refused, they concluded that he had “shown no accountability” and he was permanently excluded. I tried to challenge this decision, as his one-to-one support had failed him by leaving him unattended, but my concerns were dismissed. I then filed a case with the disability tribunal. Gloucestershire County Council paid for a solicitor to represent the school. The case was thrown out because S did not yet have a formal diagnosis.

S spent the remainder of his primary school years at St George’s, a temporary provision. The SENCO there was outstanding—she genuinely cared for the children, was knowledgeable, and communicated well with parents. However, the setting itself was far from ideal. It was essentially a hut on the grounds of a secondary school for pupils who had been excluded. This hut was where excluded children were placed, which meant S was exposed to a wide mix of challenging behaviours. As you can imagine, he picked up behaviours such as climbing out of windows and swearing, which only added to his difficulties. Very little actual education took place; although the staff did their best, lessons were often disrupted. During this entire period, S’s caseworker at GCC never once attended an EHCP review.

In 2021, S was given a place at The Peak Academy, a special school for secondary-age pupils. Unfortunately, the placement quickly revealed serious issues. There was no sense of parent partnership, very little focus on education, and S’s EHCP was routinely ignored. During review meetings, staff would openly admit they “didn’t know that was in there.” The emphasis seemed less on learning and more on keeping the children quiet—for example, S would regularly come home with large bags of sweets such as Whams. There were also frequent day trips, but little meaningful academic progress.

When communicating with CAMHS, instead of being honest and acknowledging that S did at times struggle with interactions, the school reported that he was “impeccable.” As a result, CAMHS were led to believe his difficulties only appeared at home. Tasks and strategies recommended by CAMHS to support S were ignored, despite repeated follow-up emails from both CAMHS and myself.
On top of this, S should have been supported with a laptop due to his difficulties with writing. This did not happen. Despite his capabilities—he could have worked towards 2–3 GCSEs—there was no focus on preparing him academically for exams. My son had additional needs around social interaction, but that did not make him less intelligent. He was more than capable of achieving an education equivalent to his peers in mainstream school, yet he was being denied this opportunity.

Things became worse when the family support worker – who had no safeguarding training, not even at a basic level – took it upon herself, without involving the school’s designated safeguarding lead, to pull old information from the system. This information had originally been recorded by a different staff member (who had since left), not by the family support worker herself. She then manipulated this information and entered it into a MARF form. Instead of putting her own name on the form, she used the name of a doctor from CAMHS, who had no knowledge of the form, had not been consulted, and had clearly stated he had no safeguarding concerns. The form was then submitted to social services.

The original information on the system related to an incident between S and another pupil at school. S had said, “I’ll hurt you like I do my sisters,” to which the other child responded, “That’s incest.” S then replied, “Yeah, that’s how I got so good.” (It is very likely S had no real understanding of what “incest” meant.) However, on the MARF, the family support worker recorded the incident as: “S today has made a comment within a classroom linked to incest.” This was false on several levels: the incident did not happen “today” as she recorded, the doctor named on the form was completely unaware and had no involvement, and the details of the incident were inaccurately and misleadingly presented.

In July 2023, this was submitted to GCC. We later received a call from social services about arranging a meeting for support. We didn’t hold out much hope. In the past, when someone from the Early Help team visited, the approach was superficial—she would take S out for a picnic, have a chat, and then report back “case closed.” What S needed was support through CAMHS. Instead, we were constantly pushed from pillar to post. The difficulty with CAMHS is that it is an overwhelmed service with long waiting lists. S also struggled to engage during appointments, often shutting down, which would lead CAMHS to close the case. They would then send recommendations back to the school, advising staff to support S with certain tasks—particularly as the school had an in-house counsellor. This fell on deaf ears.

27th September 2023 — a date I will carry to my grave.
That morning, my son went off to school as usual. He was annoyed with me because I had discovered he had downloaded TikTok on his phone, which he knew he was not allowed to do. That moment turned out to be the last time I saw him at home. We had no involvement with social services.

After school, S went to a local pub, presumably to use the Wi-Fi. A member of the public called the police after S reported that the evening before, I had thrown a book at him, leaving a red mark by his eye (school would report not seeing this mark all day). That evening, without any communication with us, the police took S to my elderly in-laws with nothing – no belongings, no clothes, and without considering his additional needs. S often would soil himself, and my in-laws had no means of cleaning or supporting him properly. My mother-in-law, thankfully, took a photo of the “mark.” It looked no more than a picked spot (GCC recorded it as a “swollen eye” in their files, yet no such injury was documented in the police records). The following morning, she drove from the Forest of Dean to Dursley to drop S at school, still wearing the same clothes as the day before. She had done her best to wipe away any dirt.

Whilst S was at school, a strategy meeting was held at GCC. During this meeting, it was decided that the threshold for Section 47 had been met. According to GCC, there were two reasons for this decision. However, they have only ever disclosed one – the book allegation – and have continually refused to disclose the second, despite the expectation of transparency with parents. Even now, two years later, this information has still not been shared. At the time, I was working as a childminder. Following this, I was immediately suspended and never returned to childminding.

That day, I spent hours calling/emailing the school and social services, desperate for answers, but no one would tell me whether my son was coming home or not. It was only after the school day had ended that I finally received a call back from the social worker. I was told I would need to sign a Section 20 agreement and that I must contact family members to take S in. I had serious reservations about this—my family had never cared for S on their own.

When asked about family placements, my parents said no—and even if they had agreed, I would not have felt comfortable. They have always struggled to understand S and often held old-fashioned views about how his difficulties should be managed. My sister also had her own struggles, and it would have been unfair to place additional stress on her family. More importantly, it would have been damaging for S to witness what they were going through. Her husband, my brother-in-law, has schizophrenia and is frequently sectioned, which often involves the police coming to the house and restraining him – a distressing and frightening experience for any child to see.

The reality is, all S has ever truly had is me. My entire life – 24/7 – was wrapped around him, through the good, the bad, and the ugly days. When schools struggled to manage him, it was always me they called to collect him, calm him, and support him. My wider family were there as emotional support, and we enjoyed family days out together, but S had never been in their sole care. For much of his life, he required physical restraint, and although he had made vast improvements – something noted in CAMHS reports – thanks to my hard work as his parent, to the point where his behaviour was limited to verbal outbursts or throwing items, this progress was completely overlooked in meetings and reports.

Later, when I accessed records through a Subject Access Request, I was devastated to read assessments that portrayed me as a bad parent, stating: “Ruth is not willing to explore options of staying with family members.” I asked the social worker if she could possibly stop by McDonald’s to get S some dinner, and then he could be left alone in his room to settle. What she later wrote in her reports, however, was that I was refusing to feed S – something I had no idea about at the time.

The social worker then had the police call me, insisting that I needed to sign a Section 20. She wanted me to phone family members while she was on the line, which I did, but once again each of them said no. Eventually, a foster carer was found, and S was taken there. On the paperwork, I made it clear that he should have no access to social media.

Throughout all of this, I never once got to speak directly to my son. If I was ever on loudspeaker, I was not told. The social worker sat with S and told him that I didn’t want him and was refusing to feed him. This is documented in her own case notes. Who says that to a child? Yes, I was extremely emotional that day – but that was not something my son should ever have been made to feel.

For the next two months, no meaningful work was done to support contact with my son or to plan for him to return home. When I withdrew my consent to the Section 20, I was threatened that care orders would be pursued instead. The first proper assessment meeting with the social worker – aside from one informal introductory meeting – was not held until 16th November. Until then, I was kept at arm’s length throughout the entire process.

What they were really doing during this time was tracking down S’s absent father—someone who had been out of his life for four and a half years. Before his disappearance, he had repeatedly let S down (I have all the emails to evidence this) and owed over £10,000 in CMS arrears, to the point where a warrant had been issued. He was someone I had spent six years recovering from after a domestic violence relationship, while building a stable life for my children.

I had even spent thousands on securing a residency order, which included restrictions on his father around alcohol and drug use. There was also a full safeguarding file on him in Swindon, as well as a criminal record for assault and domestic abuse against me and previous partners. Despite all this, they located him. He told social services he wanted S to have access to social media. Because he had parental responsibility, social services overrode my wishes – even though I had clearly stated in the Section 20 paperwork that S was not to use social media, and we had valid safeguarding reasons for this restriction.

From there, his father spent the remainder of the time badmouthing me – blaming me for his absence, tagging S in very old photos of me with friends in the garden to paint a false picture that I had alcohol issues, and, of course, promising S the world. Worse still, he sent S pocket money while he was in care, undermining everything further. Despite me repeatedly raising concerns to both the police and social services about this as coercive behaviour, I was ignored.

In a recorded call, I stated that I would be more than happy to return to court regarding my son’s father. In response, the social worker threatened me, saying it was not in S’s best interests and that she controlled the judge’s decision anyway. I provided social services with everything I had regarding S’s father – all the emails and evidence. I also raised in meetings that information needed to be obtained from Swindon social services.

During this period, the social worker bypassed the school’s DSL/DDSL and instead asked the family support worker – who had no safeguarding training – to have daily conversations with S. These conversations were highly inappropriate. She used leading questions and gave S false information, such as telling him that when the residency order was put in place, he had a choice about where to live. That was completely untrue: at the time, his father only had supervised contact and had never applied for custody. The social worker was not only speaking negatively to S about me, but also his teacher and even his father.

In early December, I received the social worker’s assessment – a disgusting piece of work. The majority of the information was either false or based purely on opinion. In the report, the social worker claimed that CAMHS had said I treat S like a younger child and that I was overcompensating for a diagnosis or need that was not there. After contacting the NHS directly, I received written confirmation they had never made such comments. The NHS even requested that this information be redacted, but the council failed to do so. This amounted to a false claim of medical information.

The fabricated details from the MARF form also made its way into this assessment. As a result, it now suggested that incest was happening in my home. This shows that the MARF was never properly discussed with the school or at any meeting, where its inaccuracy would have been immediately exposed. The assessment further stated that I was a bad parent because I stopped S from having social media – despite this restriction being for valid safeguarding reasons. It also portrayed me as a bad parent because I wanted S to have a proper education, rather than endless day trips with little academic value.

Before all of this, S had attended marine cadets, which he loved. It gave him structure, positive peer interaction, and valuable skills. But when my livelihood was taken away and I was forced to rely on food banks, I had no choice but to stop paying for all my children’s clubs. Because I could not continue cadets for S, this too was used against me as proof of being a bad parent. The report even stated: “Because Ruth places boundaries around her children, at times they may not like her and hate her.” To make matters worse, the entire assessment -along with all of these falsehoods – was shared with S’s father, who took great delight in using it to say I was a bad parent.

12th December 2023, I withdrew the section 20, stating clearly if S wants to live with his father, be arranged privately. This was ignored.
18th December 2023, I receive a call, father is on his way to collect S.  Never got to say goodbye, S never got to collect any of his belongings, lived with me his whole life.
Father takes great delight in saying S wants nothing to do with me, so I don’t see or speak to my son, next week 27th September will be two years since I saw or heard from him.

By the end of 2023 I was in such a desperate state that I considered taking my own life. I even went to the edge of Weston-super-Mare pier with the intention of jumping. Was I really a bad mum?

I’ve kept trying to stay involved with S’s education and EHCP through Kent County Council, but the situation has unravelled. His father -who I hadn’t seen in years – took over and claimed he was “homeschooling” S. S never ended up sitting GCSEs. Because his father disengaged with the council, the EHCP was closed. When I asked for records and past EHCPs I was told S was over 13 and would not consent to me seeing them – a decision that seems driven by his father, since Kent had not actually seen S themselves.

When S lived at home (proper decorated bedroom) he did attend school and had real potential for GCSEs – I fought for that. He loved Marine Cadets, which built his confidence; he was even reading at church. CAMHS reported he had made big improvements, and noted cognitive difficulties likely related to early trauma. They also said the fact he no longer needed to be physically restrained showed how much more stable his home life had become. None of that seemed to make it into meetings or the file.

Since being transferred to Kent, S effectively dropped out of education. He got no GCSEs, no proper support, and now lives at his grandmother’s house with his father. The notes read, that a cupboard might be his room. There is no EHCP in place – Gloucestershire didn’t even send the paperwork to Kent until after the transfer – and little in the reports or meetings focused on S’s additional needs.
The hardest part is that I’ve been shut out. I’ve always wanted the best for my son, and I regret times I didn’t stay quiet not challenge the school or soften boundaries (i.e social media etc). I keep thinking that if things had gone differently, S might still be at home, safe, and looking towards a brighter future. That thought sits with me every single day.

Yes, I have been through the complaints process.
Safeguarding information from Swindon (which I hold, along with records from Swindon Police) was not obtained until after S was moved to Kent. GCC state the information had been “accidentally missed” from his file. Even though the records clearly reference domestic abuse, I was told that because S’s father had been absent for 4.5 years, the information was considered “historic” and “no longer relevant.” I was further told it would not have changed the outcome – and the Ombudsman agreed. In addition, Kent must hold a file on his other children, who to this day confirm that drugs remain an ongoing issue. They themselves were shocked to learn that S was placed in his care.
This is the reality:
• Parents are blamed.
• You spend your life fighting to get professionals to do the jobs they are paid to do.
• False information is created to cover up failings.
• If you are “that parent” who refuses to stay quiet, you risk losing everything—your child, your livelihood etc.
I can provide evidence for everything I have written above. But as any SEND parent soon learns, no one is truly on your side. Professionals act as though they know your child better than you, despite spending only limited time with them. Meetings happen behind closed doors, and parents are excluded while professionals rally together.

The impact on my family

Everything, torn a family apart, taken a livelihood in the process (leaving us in debt). Worried constantly for my son.

What I wish had been done differently to support me
Wish I stayed quiet, all I wanted was for my son to be supported with counselling regarding his early trauma, guidance on his emotions to prevent being in trouble in later life, and an education.

Why I think a report on Systems Generated Trauma is so important?
Something has to change, no more about children being forgotten in a broken system they are being taken from their families!

One piece of advice I’d give to public service leaders:
How would you feel if this was your family, SEN parents asking for the basics mental health support and an education, why in these modern times, is this denied.