Hi
*@Xmasss*
Sorry to hear you are in this difficult position. I wanted to respond because I am an EWO and have been for a very long time. I'm sorry you haven't felt your ewo has been useful so far.
I haven't read all the comments but have read your first post carefully. Is he in year 9 or 10 and when did he transition to this school? When did this start and how quickly did it escalate? What was he like last year, the year or two before that? Does he have any SEN diagnosed or suspected? Does he show any anxiety?
I would agree with the comments about safeguarding concerns from some of his behaviours and would also advise you to seek further advice. Youth services are good, the school may employ or have access to their own youth worker. Has the EWO visited your child, perhaps with a teacher from school?
In terms of EWO support I think we are often in the firing line for both unhappy parents and schools so I wanted to respond to some of what you have said and general comments further in the thread. The primary job is to promote and enforce school attendance, that is the statutory requirement of the role so we are basically employed to identify children and young people who's attendance is cause for concern, and sort of do preliminary enquiries and investigations. We are not mental health workers, educational psychologists or social workers so we cannot work with many of the underlying causes ourselves and the role of the EWO is often to pull other things together instead. There is a legal bottom line in that under the education act, parents have a legal responsibility to ensure their children's regular and punctual school attendance and failure to do so is a criminal offence. Sometimes that feels very harsh, but in the 18 years I have done the job I can honestly say I have never seen anyone taken to court as anything other than a last resort, where months or years of support had failed and the parent had not done absolutely everything within their power to get the child into school. Regardless of how much of a last resort prosecution actually is, we do have a statutory duty to inform you of your legal position. In my local authority we probably prosecute under 5% of cases. We have had a custodial sentence recently which I am fully in support of due to the extreme nature of the case.
But much of the time, the "threat" of legal action is a theoretical one.
It sounds like you are doing as much as you can, I would suggest you try to arrange a fairly urgent meeting between anyone you think might be helpful, plus the school and your child if he will attend, and sit down and look at what is happening. Let people visit your child at home and talk to him themselves. If he won't come out of his room let them go up to see him. Make sure that he knows the law and that these people are involved because they are concerned about him and it's deeper than just not attending school. You ideally need him to participate in some of the discussions before you can identify a way forward.
There is no magic solution and no magic definitive answer, you are welcome to PM me and I will try to respond and help further if I can.
Finally, worst case scenario but it's unlikely probably, but if you DO get taken to court, represent yourself. Magistrates are usually kind and empathic to parents in your situation as long as you can prove you have done eve tithing reasonable (attending meetings, not obstructing appointments etc). Under the standard offence, it is an absolute offence meaning that like driving without insurance, if you have committed the offence of not ensuring your child attends school then you have committed the offence and there is no defence (barring a few technicalities) so you would expect a guilty verdict in court but often the cases where parents are engaged with services and not ignoring or exacerbating the problem they are just given a conditional discharge. (Basically a guilty verdict but nothing more).
It's a very tough situation, you can only do what you can do but equally this also goes for professionals who cannot perform miracles!