School complaint advice

[user1483311479]

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.

@EarringsandLipstick it's just odd that if there are safeguarding concerns, DD going with mum at 4:45 is apparently fine but 3:40 isn't?

If the mum was due to collect her at 4.40, why was it an issue that she collected her early? It would be different if the mum had no contact and was not allowed, but you said yourself that the mum was due to collect her.
This whole saga seems to have come about because your reaction to a simple change has been to go overboard. The first thing a normal parent would do if concerned would be to call the other parent. You phoned the police. Then when minutes later you found she was with her mum, that should have been the end of it, but you decided to make a safeguarding complaint about the head collecting your dd and handing her over to her mum who was due to collect her an hour later. If the mum was fine to collect her at 4.40, why isn't it OK to collect her at 3.30?? You sound like someone who is actually quite extreme and controlling. Your relationship with the school has broken down now. Your best bet would be to either
a apologize and seek to mend some fences
b move your dd to another school
What you seem to be realizing now is that you have put your dd through a great deal of trauma to prove a point. Moving her will be disruptive and take her away from all her friends.
If your concern is that the club were at fault for handing her over to the head, then complain to the club. You should not have handled this in this way and are reaping the consequences.

@user1483311479 can I ask what happened to your son?
Did you manage to get contact sorted with your controlling ex?

OP - 23 formal complaints, FOI requests every week and involving other organisations? You will be coming across as unhinged and this will get in the way of people taking any legitimate complaint seriously. I'm not surprised the head won't respond to you any more. Replying to such a high level of correspondence would take up a stupid amount of time and they have a school to run.

I think you need to decide exactly what you want to achieve and you need to be realistic about what this could be. An apology for procedures not being followed? Confirmation of tightening up of procedures in after school club? I suspect that what you are doing at the moment is just pissing everyone off and is not going to actually achieve anything substantive.

@ineedaholidaynow

I assume the Chair of governors has asked for the complaints to be detailed separately as they are all distinct issues eg mum picking up child at undesignated time, not being allowed to wear trainers. So the Chair may uphold some complaints but not others

But they can do that just as easily if the complaints are on one letter/email or several. In fact, more easily.

Great forum on facebook for this sort of advice called not fine in school. Pointless asking here.

Are the safeguarding issues only before 4.45?

Why do they have to ring to tell you she’s arrived at the club?

Op won’t be back

OP, you'd fare much better here if you could outline why this seemingly minor incident has made you so concerned. Misunderstandings over picking up children seem very common, if what I've seen over 14 years collecting my own children from school is anything to go by, and are mostly related to communication breakdowns that are nothing to do with the school or its procedures.

Why do you waste school's time over such a minor issue? Mum turned up early to collect the child. So what? What would you like to be the end result of all this drama?
You are going to look completely ridiculous if you take this to your MP or the papers.
Please take a look at your own behaviour here. You sound like very hard work.

OP I can imagine that it must have been terrifying for you when the club called to say that your dd wasn't at the club and hadn't been collected by her mum.

Did they not tell you that the Head collected her? That would have been pretty key information.

There seems to be some backstory here, is it standard practice for the club to call parents every day to confirm their DC are there? At my dc's after school club it certainly isn't - if they are booked in and DON'T arrive, the staff first check whether the DC were in school (and if they were would then call the parent to check rather than the other way around).

You've said there are safeguarding concerns with the mother - yet it would have been fine for her to collect the child at 4.45. Why would it not be ok for her to collect the child early?

The club messed up by handing the child over to the Head, they should have handed her over to the mother. The Head should have sent the mother directly to the club. But if the mother has parental responsibility and is able to collect the child then the Head hasn't done anything wrong in handing the child over to her mother.

Sending 23 complaints into school when (as you have said) most are insignificant is not helpful to you or to them. It means any serious complaints are lost amongst the pointless and petty ones. If your concern is to ensure that the club and school have clear and separate lines of authority and should not be blurring these, then address that. Not the wearing of trainers.

Don't remove your dd from this school and her friends. It sounds as though she needs this stability.

To answer some of these posts:

I did say that there are safeguarding issues with DD's mum. Social Services were already involved because of an incident weeks earlier whilst DD was in her care which had nothing to do with me and I did not call them. This incident was so serious that an emergency court hearing placed restrictions on DD's time with her mum (no restrictions on me).

DD's mum was due to collect DD from the after-school club at 4:45pm. I really do not care whether her mum is early or not, but DD does and Social Services were not impressed by what they saw as school interference. What should have happened is that DD's mum contact the club, the club contact me and DD is released - DD is technically in my care whilst at the club and they need permission from me to release DD to anyone. This did not happen, Social Worker advises I issue formal complaints to both the school and club and pursue them to ensure it does not happen again. I am not sure if any of you have experience with Social Services, but I don't really think I should ignore their advice.

Also, Social Services is split up here, so our Social Worker does not deal with school issues as that is held in a separate department - I don't really understand all the different departments, but I guess that is why she suggested I pursue formal complaints before it went to the other department. Also, school was fully aware of the situation, court orders, need to contact me, etc, and it was ignored.

If a club calls you to say that they do not know who your child went home with, but that it was not her mum, who else would you call? The school was closed and, as far as I was aware, her mum was at work where she cannot answer her phone. Everyone seems to think that its entirely normal for a child to disappear and I don't really understand that.

For those of you who think I am the problem (e.g. NovemberR, Sycamoretrees, ClairP20, etc). Social Services are entirely happy with my care of DD, as is DD and the family courts. She was interviewed twice recently, once by Social Services and once by the court, and has raised no issues with my care and the police, social services, healthcare, etc, have never raised any issue with me. It is easy to blame people over the internet without knowing the whole situation, and to be honest, I don't really want to give out the whole situation, but with the number of professional people we have involved, someone would have raised this by now if the problem was me.

Also with the questions/complaints. What actually happened was that, following my complaint over the above incident, the school questioned my legal status over DD. They have had the court order stating DD lives with me for years, but said neither they nor their legal advisors were clear what legal rights I actually had - seemingly, they know all about resident mothers but nothing about resident fathers. I wrote back giving as much information as I could on Parental Responsibility, DD's official address, some specific things relating to DD's situation, the current situation, etc, and asked why they needed this information. I was trying to be as helpful as I could because I thought they wanted to work with me. By this time, I had received the files on DD and asked three questions about the files. I also explained that I would be sending another email to essentially give them more detailed information to keep on file and asked for a secure email address. This was all one email. The headteacher said that I needed to break this email down into a list of specific questions/comments in separate emails. This became about eight emails, plus I sent the email to give further information as an extra email. I was then asked to break these emails down further, including the second email which was just statements. All these individual emails were sent to the Chair of Governors who explained that the headteacher had requested that each be submitted as a formal complaint, and that I had to write a formal letter listing each specific point and what outcome I expected for each. So, essentially the 23 complaints came from just two emails I sent, and were at the school's request not mine.

Also, with the questions. I did explain that the school records indicate that DD was unwell at school, had been punished, etc, and they had not contacted me. The issue with the trainers was because DD was punished by having to sit in a room on her own for one hour whilst her class went to do PE. The reason given is that she came to school wearing school shoes so could not participate - That is all that is written in the paperwork as the reason she was excluded from PE. She has trainers at the school (as do all children there) so I asked why she was not allowed to wear her trainers. They're not broken or lost as we have them back now. In another case, I asked for a secure email address to share sensitive information about DD with respect to the current situation, maybe the headteacher's email address or possibly they have a specific email address for this purpose. Another question is why they did not contact me when DD was unwell for at least three hours whilst at school. Other emails are just information I have sent to the school on recent issues in relation to DD to be put on file which was essentially something the court asked me to do so that the school has a written record of the situation.These were not even questions, they were just statements/descriptions of events and I ended up submitting them as complaints stating that I do not understand why the school considers them complaints.

However, maybe I now have the answer about what will happen. There's another emergency court hearing tomorrow morning. Social Services are seeking court orders for the school to release DD's files. They want the school to explain their involvement in the above incident and to explain why the school has failed to communicate with both me and DD's mum. They are also seeking court orders on after-school arrangements which will prevent school staff (and others I guess) from removing DD from the club.

And, yes, the relationship between the headmistress and both parents has completely broken down, but not the relationship with the class teacher. In my opinion, which you can criticise if you want, the headteacher was fully aware of the situation and decided to involve herself in things she did not really understand. Now she is retaliating against me because not only is she having to justify what she did to the Governors, but also to Social Services and the courts. I am sure that it is very stressful for her but all she had to do was say that she was wrong to take DD out of the club and it will not happen again. I think that's all Social Services wanted from her also. But now they're looking into her failure to communicate with parents.

I should also say that I do agree with the small minority of you that, if the situation was reversed. i.e. that I was a mother and the headteacher had removed DD and given her to a father who was a safeguarding risk with Social Services involvement, against prior agreements and the recent history of emergency court involvement, then you would likely be more supportive of my position.

Also, DD's mum is a safeguarding risk - I do not really think it is appropriate to explain why here (but the school do know). I am sure you will all appreciate that babies/young children are not given to fathers for full-time care via the courts without a very good reason.

It sounds like a combination of safeguarding issues with her mum and a complete and utter over reaction on your part.

If there is no court order preventing mum from pick up then school have done nothing wrong.

The FOI requests you are putting in are too much.

From the way you write on here you sound incredibly intense and difficult to deal with. Do what is best for your daughter and stop thinking you need to get one over on anybody.

Thanks for pointing out the facebook forum, I may look there also for some advice. Really, we just need to get back to a situation where the school does not interfere with arrangements/agreements/orders and that they actually communicate on things which matter, like DD being unwell, being punished, etc. It looks like the court might be able to do this.

Why should school need to communicate with you if your daughter is punished?
Do you really think that schools have the time to contact a parent every time a child is given a punishment?

A retired teacher here, and I am so glad your daughter was never in one of my classes.

Really, we just need to get back to a situation where the school does not interfere with arrangements/agreements/orders and that they actually communicate on things which matter, like DD being unwell, being punished, etc. It looks like the court might be able to do this.

Have the school actually done anything wrong? Releasing a child to someone with parental responsibility is OK.

Your point makes no sense because you've claimed how important school communication is, then you don't want them to communicate with you about contact. You're sounding more batshit.

I would urge posters to look at the 2 other threads started by the OP over the past couple of years.
They have had a least 2 other relationships involving abusive ex’s. Something feels awry.

So, mum has had your DD every other weekend for years, but now there are safeguarding issues that are SO SERIOUS that mum can still collect DD from school and have her with her at weekends?

You’re not making sense OP. Are you saying that the court order has put weekend contact to an end? If so, why was mum picking child up from school snd why does head not know about this new order?

@KarenMarlow3

Why should school need to communicate with you if your daughter is punished? Do you really think that schools have the time to contact a parent every time a child is given a punishment?

If they're going to punish her, then they need to properly record a good reason for it. Stating she was punished for wearing school shoes to school, something I am sure almost all children in the UK do anyway, is not really a good enough excuse to exclude her from a school activity for one hour. Maybe you could punish children at random when you were a teacher without any reason, but that's not really how it works now. I am very glad she was never in one of your classes either - I dread to think how awful she would find it.

OP were the restrictions placed on your DD's time with her mum preventing her mum from having contact between 3.45 and 4.45?

It is clear that there is a backstory here and SS involvement in your DD's contact time with her mother.

However as none of us know what the situation is, whether the Head was aware of this, whether court restrictions applied in this instance, we can't comment on whether the Head and club's actions posed a safeguarding risk to your daughter.

Possibly the school is being obstructive and closing ranks with the requests for 23 separate complaints. Possibly they are trying to make sense of what the actual issue is.

I am still unclear whether you received a call saying "OP we have some terrible news, your daughter is no longer at the club. She wasn't collected by her mother. We don't know where she is. Is she with you? Oh no, you must call the police". Or "OP, just to let you know that the Head picked your daughter up from club today".

I would suggest that you back off from the complaints and let the SS investigation play out. Then try and work with the school for the benefit of your daughter.

@Hercwasonaroll

Really, we just need to get back to a situation where the school does not interfere with arrangements/agreements/orders and that they actually communicate on things which matter, like DD being unwell, being punished, etc. It looks like the court might be able to do this.

Have the school actually done anything wrong? Releasing a child to someone with parental responsibility is OK.

Your point makes no sense because you've claimed how important school communication is, then you don't want them to communicate with you about contact. You're sounding more batshit.

Well, if there's a written order, agreement or arrangement (which there is) and the headteacher intends to do something different, then good communication with the school would mean that she would communicate what she intended to do with me. But you're missing the point - You say that releasing a child to someone with PR is ok. The headteacher does not have PR and the club released DD to her, not DD's mum. Not even at the request of DD's mum. So, by your own words, something did go wrong. DD was released to someone without PR.

@LaLaLandIsNoFun

So, mum has had your DD every other weekend for years, but now there are safeguarding issues that are SO SERIOUS that mum can still collect DD from school and have her with her at weekends?

You’re not making sense OP. Are you saying that the court order has put weekend contact to an end? If so, why was mum picking child up from school snd why does head not know about this new order?

DD's mum has not had contact with DD every other weekend for years and there have always been safeguarding issues. The court order has placed restrictions on contact, it has not ended it. We are trying to get to a point where DD can know her mother without there being a risk. You are making a lot of assumptions.

@Schoolchoicesucks

OP were the restrictions placed on your DD's time with her mum preventing her mum from having contact between 3.45 and 4.45?

It is clear that there is a backstory here and SS involvement in your DD's contact time with her mother.

However as none of us know what the situation is, whether the Head was aware of this, whether court restrictions applied in this instance, we can't comment on whether the Head and club's actions posed a safeguarding risk to your daughter.

Possibly the school is being obstructive and closing ranks with the requests for 23 separate complaints. Possibly they are trying to make sense of what the actual issue is.

I am still unclear whether you received a call saying "OP we have some terrible news, your daughter is no longer at the club. She wasn't collected by her mother. We don't know where she is. Is she with you? Oh no, you must call the police". Or "OP, just to let you know that the Head picked your daughter up from club today".

I would suggest that you back off from the complaints and let the SS investigation play out. Then try and work with the school for the benefit of your daughter.

The collection time from the club (it's essentially a half-hour window) is a written agreement between the school, club, me and DD's mother as DD's mother was unable to comply with the court order. The agreement states I am to be informed if DD's mother cancels or does not collect outside of this time - 85% of the time, DD's mother cancels as so I collect DD instead and she remains with me. The order allows written agreements to substitute the order if the order cannot be complied with.

Club called to say DD was in club. Called a few minutes later to say they could not find her and she was no longer in the club. They did not know who she had left with, but it was not her mother. Club had no manager on-site at the time and it appears that the headteacher walked in, told one staff member she was removing DD and took her away. It was a different staff member who was calling me.