Is this appropriate conduct for solicitors?

[AugustaFinkNottle]

A solicitors' firm which acts for councils in special educational needs tribunals has tweeted the following:

"Great ABA Trib win this week ... interesting to see how parents continue to persist with it. Funny thing is parents think they won ;)"

I can't link to it due to having been blocked but it's been retweeted, e.g here.

The original tweet resulted in numerous complaints and a quick change to the tweet.

The case they're triumphalising about will have involved a disabled child. Lovely.

Blimey Starlight you were put through the mill.
I feel very frustrated tonight reading stories like yours on here and on Twitter and still feeling as if we are seen as habitual whingers who enjoy fighting the LA.

I feel a few comments are starting to creep in that try to minimise what Mark Small said. The guy who critisized SN jungle post runs a business training TAs in SN. A lot of less supportive tweets are being re tweeted by those in education. The headmaster of SN school defending the 'professionalism' of LA lawyers.
Why? Still no sense of working together, it's them and us.

It got a lot worse than that Jeremy but I'd be pushing it to expect people to believe beyond what I've just written,

I believe you star. It never ceases to amaze me the lengths schools, LA's and thier reps go to to avoid following the law.

Thank you youare. My sanity has been saved to an extent by helping others and by submersing myself in amongst good people. But often, I have been unable to share what happened to us, even the good people. I would sound utterly deranged.

This 'story' has enabled parents with stories like mine to share just a little bit more and be believed, and to seek support from each other.

It's also sadly has the effect for some of forcing them to relive what they had buried. i hope they are okay.

Though the brutality (not the battle, that will be for the rest if my life) ended 4 years ago the past 2 nights I've sobbed myself to sleep.

star

Oh my goodness. That is beyond the pale. How absolutely awful. How could anyone be so vindictive?

I'm so sorry that happened to you Star. But I can't understand how this firm has managed to stay in business very long when they behave so unprofessionally and so appallingly.

I really hope that this is the end of BS.

I do wonder if the LAs see it as if BS save them 1 secondary school placement at £100,000 a year (so £500,000) total then all the loses don't matter because the contract price for that year has been recouped iyswim. I guess if it's BS hounding the families and not the la direct then they justify it by distancing themselves from it?

I'm glad a government minister is on this case. It's horrific that la are going to this length to avoid following government set policy. They should be called to standards IMO - after all, they are the ones directing BS and other legal companies to fight for them.

I'm sure LAs do see BS as being worth the money if they win appeals. However, there are other very good solicitors out there who could do the same without being so aggressive and treating parents as if they despise them. I also wonder whether it really is such a saving when it appears that BS routinely appeal when they lose, even when there are blatantly no valid grounds for appeal. If the LAs have to pay for those attempts to appeal, in effect they're paying for nothing.

Very often we are not talking about £100k pa. My DC place at a specialist school is a quarter of that amount.

On the very day of the final hearing, the LA walked into the tribunal building with a new document which agreed a package of support. This would have to be externally bought in and cost the exactly the same as the SN school I wanted. But still the LA dragged me through a full hearing with all that entails (financially and emotionally).

They then lied during the hearing about some of these external costs - and were promptly told off by the judge. I must admit that by the time we got to the hearing, the judge and her panel were very fair and also stopped any LA nonsense as soon as they attempted anything. That part of the process was fair.

But it should never have got to hearing. Even the night before, my expert witnesses and lawyers were not charging me for their last minute time as they couldn't believe what had happened in my DC's case and that I was being dragged into a full scale hearing

This is why there is so much fury at the likes of BS. MS appears to think it's funny to mock parents of disabled children by telling it to his cat and tweeting a photograph of a luxury villa with its swimming pool.

It is out and out offensive, immoral and unethically.

Yes, an increasing number of LA lost cases go to appeal by the LA under BakerSmall for barely any reason.

Again, the motive is not to win anything but to bleed the parents as much as possible to punish them.

It is also to establish a record of doing this as a deterrent to parents newly coming into the system.

We lost our case because whenever we looked like we were winning something, the LA would throw in some totally irrelevant provision such as 'parenting course' or 'sherbourne Movement' (interpretive dance kind of (yes really)) until the cost of the LA offer was more than the very basic evidence-based outcomes focused and relatively cheap provision we wanted.

Panel felt eventually that the LA's now expensive provision should be given a chance, though nothing at all was offered before the actual day of the hearing.

LA failed to 'get around' to arranging anything for 5 months when the initiated an Annual Review of the statement and removed all provision as 'unnecessary and irrelevant'.

Btw, my last post here is kind of normal practice and what many many parents go through even with no BakerSmall involvement.

The mail online have it now.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3640278/Fury-solicitors-hired-council-fight-parents-special-needs-children-school-places-BOASTS-Twitter-ruining-families-dreams.html

oh my - despite MS best efforts to take down his picture from various sites, the Daily Mail have got it!

I never did get my day in court with him as my LA had chucked him off my case after the first (LA conceded) tribunal. So now I can finally see what the man who caused me and mine so much anguish and nearly brought me to a nervous breakdown looks like.

For once, well done Daily Mail!

I agree, I am proud to post a Daily Mail link

His statement in case anyone can't get on his website. Not very impressive. Funny how he's done nothing wrong but already one LA has said they won't instruct him

And he wants to go to the police because someone allegedly called him a cunt? Wouldn't last long on MN would he?

Bless him, he does like to play the victim. I am sure that the police will rush round within the hour.

How come he never mentioned these "offensive emails" being a trigger for his outbursts until the DM contacted him?

He's had several days to do so and in all honesty - if he even knows what that is - he should have prefaced his original tweet with that.

However, his original tweet was the one gloating about the parents thinking they'd won when they'd only been granted a tiny percentage of the provision he'd steamrollered, so even this last statement of his makes no sense.

Congratulations Mark Small for showing everyone how your firm actually operates and what you really think of the parents of SEND children. I'm sure that your current clients will be reviewing your contracts if they have not already done so.

It's disgraceful behaviour and he is trying to justify it
I hope this is his Gerrard Ratner moment and it's the end if the company

He wants to go to the police because someone called him a cunt?

Maybe he should think about how bullying the most vulnerable people in society is really not going to lead people to think he is anything else...

So, you're a busy solicitor sitting down on a Saturday night to watch a big football match. You decide, of course, to check your emails at that moment. You receive a threatening email which upsets you greatly. However, you don't decide to go to the police, or ignore it, or talk to a colleague about taking action against the person who threatened you. Instead you decide to post a tweet boasting about a tribunal "win" and poking fun at the parents of the disabled child concerned. Having done that, you decide to carry on provoking people with LOLs and pictures of cats and sneering at the parents of disabled children for being emotive.

Then, next morning, you realise that maybe you shouldn't have done that. But it never once occurs to you that, when you're apologising and abasing yourself generally, you should (a) make it very clear that you and you alone were responsible and not try to imply it was an underling; or (b) explain that the nasty email made you do it.

I call bullshit.