Open Letter to Gavin Jones – CEO Slough Borough Council and CEO Essex County Council
Dear Mr Jones,
This is regarding my interaction with you on Twitter, and also the email I sent you last year.
You should have my real name and contact details via the email I sent you last year although i’m going to guess you may have deleted it after reading it, or deleted it unread. In that case you can contact Paul Turner, Monitoring Officer, he knows my real name and contact details.
While my blog, and what i’m now doing on social media, no doubt marks me out as a terrible person by the local authority I had no other choice.
Terrible things happened to my children by the local authority, things which you refused to even investigate. A suicide attempt by one of my children that despite my child being vocal about what caused it, wasn’t acknowledged by yourselves.
Imagine a child pouring out their heart as to the reason they attempted suicide and two social workers having to just stand there and not even acknowledge to my child what they were saying solely because you refused to investigate it. That is the place from which i’m writing this blog, a place of pain, a place of watching my children go through ‘torture’, that is the word they use.
My children have been severely damaged by what happened, and the local authority have gone over and above to avoid any responsibility, not even investigating it.
Not even investigating what almost killed my child.
Not even investigating a social worker who had a safeguarding referral made against them by two other professionals after disclosures of abuse by my children.
These are my children, to do nothing about what happened to them is not an option.
Is blogging the right way? It’s the only thing i’ve got, it’s the only way I can get my children’s voices heard.
Every single thing i’ve written has been the truth. I have evidence for a substantial amount of what I have said.
I need to know why you liked my Tweet? It was about one of the most traumatic events i’ve ever been through, something that gave me PTSD, and i’ve had a few flashbacks since you liked my Tweet as I cannot stop thinking about it. I’m a complete mess about it and I really need to know why you liked it?
I don’t want or need an apology, it would not be sincere as a sincere apology would have been made straight away.
I do need to know why though, it is causing me a great deal of distress and I can’t stop thinking about it, and I keep bursting into tears about it.
It is one of the worst things the local authority has done to me because it feels like it is mocking my trauma and I desperately need an explanation, a truthful explanation. I just cannot understand why you did what you did, and then reacted by banning me, and then disabling your account.
I haven’t got an army behind me like you have, I am doing this solely by myself, I have nobody who is there to tell me that everything I do is brilliant like you do.
I don’t want to discuss this blog or it’s content with you or have any kind of comment regarding it, I just want an explanation of why you liked my post.
I know how you run the local authority when it comes to things going wrong.
I made a series of complaints to another organisation, a lot of complaints because things had gone very wrong.
They totally failed.
Their answer to that was to listen to me and my lived experience and use my lived experience to extensively change the way they do things. They couldn’t change what had happened to me, but they used the failings to improve things, learn from what went wrong and ensure it doesn’t happen to anyone else. I don’t benefit directly from anything they have done, but I am so proud of myself for speaking up and so pleased that they not only listened, but treated me like a real person, and have made things better for others. That is how things should be done.
You on the other hand have a culture of hushing things up, if you can pretend it didn’t happen, in my case by not investigating, and wiping a child in need meeting from existence, then there has been no failure. Of course this means it will happen again, and given the gravity of what happened to my children, children will die. It’s still possible that one of mine will die as a direct result of the failures you refused to investigate.
I’m not going to go on about it, you as Chief Executive, and directly responsible for all decisions made by the officers under your employ, chose to cover things up and not investigate, I wanted a simple apology and an acknowledgement of what had gone wrong as that would have helped my children immensely, would have avoided the suicide attempt, and would have meant my children could have gotten the help they desperately needed at the time instead of three years later.
I’ve decided to make everything public, posting as much evidence as I can without divulging my children’s identities or information which could lead to their identities being guessed at. I’d personally be more than happy with my name and face all over this blog and social media. To be fair, my children wanted to go to the papers and wanted to have their names and photo printed, but because of how vulnerable they are I don’t think that is a good idea.
I don’t want any comments from anyone at Essex County Council regarding my blog or social media posts, I don’t want to engage with anyone over anything I write. Tried that one, as you know with the email I sent you that you felt I was not even worthy of a response, nobody cares, i’ve accepted that and i’m fine with that moving on.
I’ve got quite a bit more to write, which I haven’t yet as it’s going to be incredibly traumatising for me to have to relive it, but the public need to know, and those with an interest in protecting children, and organisations with an interest in protecting children need to know, all of that is my next steps after i’ve finished my blog.
You can take me to court to shut me up, and I know that is a very real possibility, and one i’m actually terrified of. I’m confident however that I have more than enough paperbased evidence that proves what i’m saying is true. In court with those who are trained to be able to tell when someone is telling the truth, my evidence would be favoured over anyone who i’ve mentioned in this blog solely because I am telling the truth and that is not something you can fake when you are in a legal situation and you are solely working with your memory. You cannot get tripped up when all of your evidence is coming from your memory as it all matches.
All I want is an email, or a phonecall, again, my telephone number will be on record, where you explain why you liked my post.
I desperately need that, I need that for my mental health and to stop bursting into tears over it. I don’t care what your explanation is, I just need one.
I can guess that whatever it is you think i’m in the wrong otherwise you wouldn’t have banned me, I don’t care about any of that.
I don’t want to enter any discussion about what happened to my children, I don’t want to enter into any discussion as to why you refused to investigate, I solely want an explanation for that like.
One sentence, or a phone call lasting less than two minutes, I don’t want or need an apology, I just want an explanation.
I really do need one, I cannot express this enough, I don’t even care if you want to yell at me for tagging you in my posts, as long as you explain the like. You can even yell at me for blogging, I don’t care, I just want an explanation for that like.
Many thanks,
Below, for readers of this blog is what i’m talking about.
This is what happened on Twitter:
This is the email: