“The Role of Government Edicts in False Accusations of Child Abuse”.

Blue paragraphs and extracts may be cut through shortage of time.
Red italic items are reference materials not intended to be read out.

Until recently I thought our own family story was history but it has now come back to haunt us because we have again exercised our right to use the SEN Tribunal which stemmed from the 1981 Act. To the utter amazement of those who submitted reports to her Statutory Assessment of Special Educational Need our LEA has refused to give our daughter an SEN Statement. Without a Statement she has no access to resources for vital computer equipment and it is not possible to place her in a small school. She can’t cope with busy crowded places and is close to secondary transfer. All our LEA secondary schools are absolutely massive.

We discovered to our horror that the LEA had passed our papers to their same Tribunal officer who in 1999 had supposedly protected our son by blocking medical reports at his Tribunal. This officer’s actions had helped precipitate our traumatic Child Protection fiasco and had delayed our son’s Statutory Assessment of Educational Need and diagnosis of his Asperger’s syndrome for 3 years. Her actions had caused him immense social and educational damage.

I objected to this officer’s involvement in our daughter’s case but my objections were ignored. The involvement of this woman felt to me like the reopening of an old and painful wound. I then discovered that yet more papers had been sent to her. This infuriated me and I felt as if someone had poured acid into the open wound, so I accused the LEA of a breach of trust.

They looked out old files and discovered that we had complained about the 1999 SEN Tribunal and that their complaints process had absolved the officer of guilt.

LEA complaints procedures do not work in False Accusation of MSBP. Meadow, Southall and their supporters have defined “complaining” as a “symptom” of the supposed illness. Complaints procedures invariably whitewash the actions of MSBP accusers as they are acting within the Department of Health Guidelines, to which I will return. The LEA therefore backed their own findings, supported the officer and dredged up words from the 1999 files to describe me as offensive, inappropriate and malicious and to restrict my access to those I need to deal with on a routine basis.

That’s more than enough about my family but I hope it serves as illustration of some of the wider points.

The inability through ignorance, inertia or lack of resources of schools to deal with children with conditions such as Dyslexia and Dyspraxia, ADD and ADHD, Asperger’s syndrome and other Autistic Spectrum disorders, ME or chronic fatigue syndrome, epilepsy, diabetes, elective mutism, school phobia and other subtle difficulties and rare genetic disorders causes mayhem for these children and their families. Baroness Linklater pointed out in a recent address to the Scottish Liberal Club that whilst these children’s needs can often be met in primary schools, large secondary schools frequently precipitate educational failure and social misery for them.
Cash strapped Local Education Authorities, even in Conservative areas such as my own, repeat David Blunkett's mantra of integration, integration, integration. An educational psychologist from a neighbouring borough said to me a few days ago “they’ve all been on their courses in new Labour spin and don’t even look at the problems they cause for families”.

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© Jan Loxley Blount 05 11 04 London

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