Hi everyone,
I have an eight year old DD who has always lived with me and visits her mum on alternate weekends. She is in public primary school and sometimes goes to the after-school club, which I pay for and is in my name. The club rents rooms at the school but are legally separate and have their own management, rules, staff, etc.
One day last month, DD was sent to the club at 3:15pm as usual and her mum should have collected her at 4:45pm as she has always done. The club called at 3:30pm to confirm that DD had arrived at the club. Her mum turns up at 3:40pm instead of 4:45pm and contacted the headteacher who is still on site, instead of contacting the club. The headteacher goes to the club claiming she has authority to remove children as she is a headteacher and, as no club manager was there, no club staff stopped her taking DD out and handing her over to her mum (the club later confirmed all this in writing). No-one contacts me at any point about this, not even DD's mum. The club later called to say DD is no longer at the club and that she was not collected by her mum. I call the police as I do not know where DD is, but find out minutes later that she is with her mum.
There are safeguarding issues with DD's mum. Both the school and club had agreed to contact me first if there were any changes to existing plans, particularly with respect to DD's mum. Neither the school nor the club contacted me. Club rules are that only authorised people can remove DD from the club (i.e. me and her mum) and that passwords must be used otherwise. There is nothing in school policies about school staff being able to remove children from any club or activity outside school hours.
Social Services became involved, interviewed DD who said she did not want to be removed from the club and was not happy about being taken out by the headteacher in-front of her friends, rather than being taken out of another exit by club staff as usual. The assigned Social Worker advised issuing formal complaints to the club and school and referred me on to the Education Safeguarding Team within the local authority. The Education Safeguarding Team said the headteacher had already been in contact to say that DD was at school and that she had handed DD to her mum at 3:15pm, and that the issue was about me trying to stop DD from seeing her mum. I told them that DD was actually in the club and the headteacher had no authority to remove her, and offered the evidence on this from the club and Social Services reports. I have had nothing back from them yet.
The club has since essentially admitted they were at fault for releasing DD to an unauthorised person, but only after they were told they would be inspected by the ombudsman as a result of what happened.
The school have refused to comment on the matter, stating that the incident and my subsequent complaint is not within their remit. This was followed by a complaint by the headteacher that I had threatened her job, which I had not. Part of the school complaint procedure states that they do not necessarily have to respond to staff behaviour outside of school hours. I suspect they are trying to use this to avoid the issue by claiming that the headteacher was acting outside of school and so she cannot be disciplined.
If the teacher went to the club outside of school hours claiming to have authority over them as a headteacher, so clearly stating that she was acting on behalf of the school, but the school say it was outside of school hours and so it is not within their remit to respond to the complaint, what should I do? I was thinking that if she was technically outside of school and not acting as school staff then I could contact the police to give her a warning about trying to remove children from the club as an unauthorised person. I also thought about contacting my MP or the Education Minister and basically forcing the issue that the school must consider my complaint as she said she was acting on behalf of the school. Does anyone have any advice on this, or any other ideas?
It has become worse since, as the headteacher now says that neither she nor the deputy headteacher will communicate with me anymore and that the only way I can communicate with the school is to issue formal complaints via the Chair of Governors. Emails I sent to the school have been sent to the Chair of Governors, who has said that I need to break each email down into a single question or issue and raise each one as a separate complaint. The majority are simple questions such as "what email address should I send this to?" and "Why was DD not allowed to wear trainers to her PE lesson?". I have been forced to lodge 23 'complaints' so far, and the Chair of Governors has said that he will now carry out a full investigation into each one individually and to expect a response sometime after Christmas. I have told him how bizarre this all is, but he says that he and the school are simply following procedure. However, I suspect that this is all being done as revenge because I issued a complaint and the school are simply trying to make things difficult.
Because they were not communicating with me, I have been making Freedom of Information requests each week which they have to comply with. However, the school are currently refusing to release any records with respect to DD being taken out of the club by the headteacher stating that they are unable to do so because I issued a complaint. However, I now have records which show that DD was recently unwell at school, was excluded from a school activity and was essentially punished for wearing a certain item of clothing, even though the clothing is school approved. The school had not contacted me about any of these at the time but, as we now have a Social Worker, had been sending reports to Social Services claiming that these incidents were evidence that I abuse and neglect DD. The school also sent these records to DD's mum when they were released to me who has raised concerns with Social Services that I abuse and neglect DD based on what the school says, but also raised concerns with the school that they were refusing to communicate with her also. The Social Worker has essentially said that what they are sending is not all that important at the moment. I then raised a safeguarding concern with how DD is being treated at school with Social Services, which got sent to the Education Safeguarding Team, which I am still yet to hear from.
Does anyone have any advice on where to go from here? I did start looking into whether I could take the school to court just to obtain a court order forcing them to communicate with me, but I do not really think that is possible. I also thought about going to the press to publicise it all. I could take DD out of the school, but she really likes it there and has lots of friends and she's having a hard enough time with the whole situation, being interviewed by Social Services, etc, as it is. The next nearest school with spaces is 14 miles away which is not the easiest given that this school is less than a mile. In a way, I think that the school are acting this way to try and force us out anyway which makes me all the more determined to keep her there.