Unless Labour stand up to the public, we will never have functioning services

@LostTheMarble it's because they don't get taught sen, no strategy for helping, no understanding of over stimulation, need for self regulation or help for adhd. Many think dyslexia is coloured paper and have no understanding of executive function working memory issues and so on.

The teeniest bit of knowledge on these areas would make a huge difference. They don't have to diagnose, treat or make massive changes.

From what position are you claiming this? As I said above, I have two children in two different mainstreams. The communication from one has been non existent. My child had a severe meltdown one day, was trying to self harm and in a full panic. The school didn’t once speak to me about it - they told the after school club to tell me he’d had a bad day, and when I tried to speak to them myself they wouldn’t reply. As a parent of a sen child, I am meant to have a handful of meetings a year about termly targets - again a triangulation between student, parent and teacher about the best way to meet the child’s needs. I’ve not had one, not one single meeting about this in the last three years. They eventually give me their targeted plan which is often poorly written about half way through each term with no offer to discuss it. Enough communication my absolute arse.

Complaints procedures are often just a way of kicking the can down the road and fobbing the person because its easier in the moment than addressing their issue. I took time off recently to attend an appointment. When I got there I'd been double booked. I was immediately handed a complaints leaflet. No attempt made to come to a solution. So I think rather than issue a blanket 'stop complaining' message to the public, services need to get better at coming up with informal resolutions to more trivial concerns, rather than the constant signposting to procedures that are unnecessarily clunky and time consuming for both the public and the agency.

The deep issues with education has been from teachers holding parents at arms length.

Give over! Parents get way more communication from schools now than ever before. No way you can blame teachers not sharing info as a cause for the very recent loss of trust.

I don't want to live in a society where I am legally not able to hold someone to account if I feel it's necessary.

Well I want to live in a society where there has to be a "reasonableness" test before you get to make someone else's life hell by trying to hold them to account.

Absolutely this! I have two children with ASD in two different mainstream schools. One has a dedicated SENCO, the other does not. The difference is like night and day in terms of clear communications, understanding individual needs, triangulation between school/parent/teachers. I am wholly supportive of teachers (the ones with boots to ground, less so SLT), I understand the absolute clusterfuck education is in. But I’ve also had to deal with the most awful, ignorant, ‘pretend it’s not a problem and when it is we’ll make it your problem’ attitudes from one child’s school because they refuse to remodel for SEN.

I manage a service and we get more compliments than complaints. The few people that do complain often have issues of their own, are under a lot of stress and are people that can read but not perhaps fully understand often quite complex information about health and social care. They can take up a lot of time. People who should complain, often don’t complain.

When you see the responses from organisations and private businesses like retail for example, to unhinged and unreasonable complaints, its all placating them and making changes in the light of that ONE unreasonable complaint,,,, I just wish that companies and organisations would have the balls to say no. We werent in the wrong, sorry you were disattisifed but we're confident we did the right thing

The example above about A+E is a classic. OK, go to the media then, but you're not staying here when its not warranted.

It's hardly surprising though is it that after 14 years of imposing resource scarcity on public services, that a hunger games mentality takes hold in service users, making sure that they get their ration. Call me cynical, but it's part of the tactic in some right wing circles, because once it gets to this point, they imagine that the argument to dissolve or privatise the service can gain traction. Hard lesson never learned by right wingers is though that people want their public services to work, and not to have to think about it. They want to be able to take it for granted, and not to have to pay for it outside of general taxes. So rhetorical cycle begins again. Labour will try to repair the services and rhetorical Tories will then dismantle them again when they get into power. It's in their blood to do it.

Your example is about an EHCP, but the extra workload that brings you think is 'on the teacher'. They alone are not equipped with the time to deal with this. And they're not responsible for the issues.

Complaints aren't always about the individual and therefore a problem with them, just they're the ones being expected to deal with your problem when they're actually employed to do something else that already takes longer than the time they're given to do it!

However, parents advocating for their children mean that about 14% are now identified as having special educational needs, many more than in the past.

On a thread not long ago there many teachers saying that it’s not uncommon for 50% or more of a class to be SEN. Something’s gone badly wrong.

I'm frontline NHS and remember when we had a patient present at A&E for something which could be managed in the community, he refused to leave until he had been admitted, threatening to go to the media.

He was admitted and sat on the ward for what felt like forever even though he didn't need to be there. Any time he was told he could leave he just became threatening again and staff backed down. In the end, he apparently was told his benefits were going to get cut and he left the hospital that same day.

The powers that be pandered to this man purely because they didn't want bad press and a ton of complaints (even though they were in the right!). It's no wonder we have patients on trollies all over the hospital when there are entitled fuckers like this blocking beds.

That may be a contributory factor but there is a level of entitlement within the public now, to know things and have things and INSTANTLY, not let the authorities get on with their job.

We are growing a society who views themselves as extra special, not that they are part of a mass, there is a very individualised view of the world rather than a community and society view.

Thats fine if you want to have self accessed/very independent services that you yourself control but it doesnt work with socialised care/policing/education/health etc etc

Who do you think makes the policies ? When you get high up you realise the problem with the civil service is the whim of government ministers who have no idea about the department they are running.

Holding to account for what? Not being seen when it suits you? A child being told off by a teacher? Being spoken to sarcastically by a police officer? A sharp word from a tired nurse?

The public see themselves as customers of schools, the NHS etc instead of people who benefit from a free service.For me that has been the real shift in expectations. I've worked in the NHS and dealt with hundreds of petty complaints taking up useful resources ( I don't like the wallpaper at the hospital! My doctor smelled of garlic! etc). However at the other extreme, 50 years ago people were frightened of complaining about doctors, abusers knew this and were able to carry on unchecked for years. We need a happy medium.

That last paragraph sums up the problem. You view the system and the people who work in it as attempting to fob you off with a substandard service. I have some sympathy. I had a telephone consultation with a doctor the other day that ended with me saying "I understand the pressure you are under, but I do feel this would be much easier if I was allowed just one face-to-face appointment" - effectively having to beg or negotiate for something that was formerly a normal part of the service.

However, parents advocating for their children mean that about 14% are now identified as having special educational needs, many more than in the past. What you are advocating for is a better service than we used to get. In order to provide a better service, the schools need more resources, which they haven't got. So teachers are in a position of having to get more milk from the same cow or face upset and disappointed clients.

The nature of email, and replying to it, is also different to the meetings and letters that email replaced. I don't teach (any more) but I respond to complaints by email and they are somewhat similar to the emails I would imagine teachers receive, in that the complainant often isn't in full possession of the facts. In order not to appear dismissive, I draft my responses carefully, which takes time. If that was a letter, or a meeting, the conversation would naturally end. If it's an email, even a careful and full response can immediately generate a follow-up question or complaint, sometimes because the person you are corresponding with is annoyed at not getting their way and wants you to suffer for it. It's often not just a case of quickly exchanging information.

It’s their job to enforce legislation to enable teachers to do this without ‘I’ll report you to ofsted’, yes

No thanks. I don't want to live in a society where I am legally not able to hold someone to account if I feel it's necessary.