Faithless & Sabrina Setlur - Bring My Family Back

Dear government: an open letter about special needs education

Dear Government, I do not think you know what harm you are causing to the children in your care. 

Then again, maybe you do. Maybe you just don’t care. You have the responsibility to provide safe, appropriate education. You have torn families apart, caused kids so much harm that they’re ending up in hospital and put kids into harmful educational settings. 

I myself have experienced the pain of being placed in the wrong education. In September, I’ll be starting at my 5th education type in less than 2 years. The longest I have been in a secondary school is 1 year. I was pulled out of school when I was in hospital. Too ill to attend and almost 2 years later we have only just received funding for a school which we hope will be my last...

More - 
https://suitable-education.uk/dear-government-an-open-letter-about-special-needs-education/

We Emailed Medwyn Hughes - Bangor Councillor - In January.

In January of 2018 we sent an email to Richard Medwyn Hughes - 

Dear Richard,

My wife
and I came across a copy of the report you authored in your capacity as
Chair of the Audit and Governance committee dated 28 Sept, 2017. We also
discovered that you are Vice-Chair of the Care Scrutiny Committee for
Gwynedd Council.

I believe it is my families case that is mentioned in the report as
being referred to the Ombudsman, the reason for this being the
Council's refusal to escalate our complaint to Stage 2 of the complaints
procedure.

We raised other issues related to but different from our earlier
complaint and the Ombudsman advised us to raise this as a separate
complaint with the Children and Family Department.

Due to the difficult history of the families case we raised an
immediate stage 2 complaint with Customer Care, that was in May of last
year, which has still not been concluded.

We believe the Council has behaved in an obstructive and delaying
manner. There has been no proper communication or information
forthcoming from the Council during the process and a staggering lack of
transparency.

For your information we include a copy below of an email sent today to our MP, Liz Saville Roberts.

We note there is a Care Scrutiny Committee meeting later this month and ask if this meeting is open to the general public ?

Also, we would be happy to share and discuss our experiences with
anyone from either the Audit and Governance Committee or the Care
Scrutiny Committee to provide clarity on the situation regarding the
Customer Care department and how the Complaints procedure has been
implemented in our case.

For your information a stage 2 complaint was raised regarding the
ongoing issues in this case in 2010 and all points of complaint upheld
but recommendations never acted upon.

The Head of Children and Families has stated this report to be
irrelevant to the current situation - we do not agree. Yet another
example of the attitude that we have encountered for so many years.

The Department have repeatedly cited their disability criteria
along with the Equality Act and even the Social Services Care Act 2014
as a means to refuse services rather than provide much needed support.
This needs to change.

                                                                     ************************************



His response on the 10th of January 2018 was to CC the Democratic
Services Manager, Corporate Support Department, Vera Jones into the
email.

Dear ***********



I acknowledge receipt of your email dated 06/01/18.



I have asked the officers concerned about your issues.



The
Audit and Governance committee of which I am Chair tend not to look at
individual cases but at trends and practices involving circumstances
like this.



The Care Scrutiny Committee meetings are streamed live and are open to the public where space is available.



However as you have raised this issue  with me I have sent your email on.



No doubt an officer will be in touch as soon as possible.



In the meantime you should also contact your local councillor along with including your postal address to me in a future email.



Regards,

R Medwyn Hughes

Gwynedd Council Fail.: We Emailed Medwyn Hughes - Bangor Councillor.: