Parents of special needs children in Bristol have demanded an independent inquiry into a scandal which saw council officers monitor the parents’ social media posts. A motion has been proposed demanding an independent inquiry is set up into what happened around the council officers monitoring of social media accounts of parents, as part of a move to take funding away from the Bristol Parent Carer Forum, the council’s partner group of parents.
An internal investigation into the scandal was presented to councillors last month, but its findings - which claimed there was ‘no systematic’ spying on the parents of children with special educational needs or disabilities - has not satisfied the parents or opposition councillors at City Hall. On Tuesday, the full council meeting will see a proposal to be voted on that an independent inquiry is set up, with council officers required to properly explain what they were doing checking the social media posts of parents, and who had asked them to do that.
The scandal erupted just before it was announced the city council was trying to remove the official funding and status from the Bristol Parent Carer Forum, the group of parents the council was partnering with to try to improve the city’s poorly-rated SEND provision. The council said they were dropping the BPCF because some parents on the forum had criticised the council’s SEND performance on social media - but it became apparent that some of the social media posts being cited as evidence for this were in private groups or from private accounts, and officers at the council had been collecting evidence from these in apparent breach of council policy.
Read more: Council boss says ‘no systematic monitoring’ of SEND parents
Now, the Green Party councillors - who match the ruling Labour administration’s councillors in number - are expected to support the motion calling for an independent inquiry, and say it will seek to ‘hold the Labour administration to account over their appalling treatment of these families, and failure to adequately support the needs of Bristol’s disabled and neurodiverse young people’.
“These are people’s lives. What happens during childhood and early adulthood shapes people’s ability to achieve their ambitions, dreams and the extent to which they can make a positive contribution to society,” said Cllr Christine Townsend, the Green group’s education lead. “The individual stories of SEND educational failure are becoming more prevalent with parent carers emboldened to speak out for their children and the services that have failed them.”
Education chiefs at the council, which was recently inspected by Ofsted following massive delays and backlogs in the production of individual plans for each child’s education and support needs, known as an EHCP, played down the spying scandal when giving evidence to a scrutiny committee.
A top lawyer working for Bristol City Council claimed there was “no systematic monitoring” of the social media of parents with disabled children. Nancy Rollason, head of legal service, faced questions on the fact-finding report she co-authored on council officers collecting social media posts of parents with children with special educational needs and disability (SEND), which cleared staff of any wrongdoing.
She told councillors last month staff had not systematically monitored tweets of two local mothers, despite new evidence showing many months worth of tweets were collected into a dossier. A previous leak also showed council staff sharing private wedding photos of one of the mothers.
One parent of a SEND child claimed the spying scandal was the latest in a long line of failures by Bristol City Council in the way it deals with children with special educational needs and disabilities.
Jai Breitnauer, from Ashton Vale, has two children on the autistic spectrum. She said: “Our older child was out of school for over a year while we waited for an EHCP. In the end, we had to pay a solicitor to secure his legal right to an education in school.
“Our younger son’s needs assessment has been delayed by over a year, meaning he recently started in Year 7 with no EHCP in place. Bristol Council seems happy to play god with our children's education and ultimately their lives,” she added.
