Our Mission

Why My Experience Led to This Campaign

Step Up for Change grew from my personal experience with Nottingham City Council Children’s Services and the insight I gained into how a council and its systems of accountability should—and should not—operate.

Throughout this experience, I kept a contemporaneous record of correspondence and decisions. I tried to resolve my concerns through front-line services, management, an Independent Reviewing Officer, Quality Assurance, Stage 1 and Stage 2 complaints, Information Compliance, senior leadership, council governance, elected-member routes and professional family advocacy.

My experience was not of one isolated mistake. It was of disputed information entering a safeguarding narrative, challenges failing to produce complete correction, and repeated escalation leading to another disconnected process rather than a coordinated resolution. I came to believe that the problems extended beyond the actions of one person or the handling of one complaint.

From my personal experience, I believe I have identified:

• systemic maladministration;
• institutional bias;
• institutional confirmation bias;
• possible manipulation or inflation of safeguarding narratives and thresholds;
• institutional defensive practice;
• systemic communication failure;
• concerns about evidential and record integrity;
• failure of professional, managerial and corporate accountability;
• failure to protect and stabilise important family relationships; and
• a breakdown in Nottingham City Council’s internal mechanisms for challenge, correction and governance.

Developments That Strengthened My Concern

Several later developments reinforced my belief that these concerns require independent scrutiny:

• A later professional assessment did not identify the earlier safeguarding picture as it had originally been presented, yet I could not establish that the disputed historical information had been fully corrected or reconciled.
• Information Compliance had to intervene after disputed contact details continued to be used during the complaints process.
• A professional family advocate also experienced difficulty obtaining coordinated engagement and a constructive multi-professional response.
• A later Stage 2 response recorded that historical Children’s Social Care information and an earlier safety plan were among the information considered in a subsequent safeguarding decision. Important questions about the source, accuracy, consent, context and updating of that information remain disputed or unresolved.
• Although concerns were raised through operational, complaint, independent-review, information-governance, senior-leadership, corporate and elected-member routes, I was not told of a single senior owner coordinating the cross-cutting issues.

These developments led me to believe that systems intended to challenge mistakes and protect families can themselves become fragmented, defensive or ineffective when concerns cross departmental and organisational boundaries.

I present this as my personal experience, concerns and interpretation. Some matters remain disputed or await official or independent determination. I am not claiming that every delay or contested decision was unlawful, or that criminality or individual misconduct has been established. My concern is whether the evidence was properly tested, whether records and information-sharing were accurate and auditable, and whether the available safeguards were capable of securing timely correction and accountability.

Why I Believe the Problem Is Wider Than One Council

My personal experience is the reason I began this campaign, but it is not the only reason I believe change is needed.

When I compare what I experienced with publicly available information, inspection findings, complaint decisions, council reports and experiences reported by families in other areas, I see many of the same concerns appearing repeatedly.

These wider concerns include:

• allegations, opinions and predictions being presented as though they were verified facts;
• disputed information being copied between records, reports and organisations until it appears to have been independently confirmed;
• assessments giving greater weight to negative information while overlooking parental progress, cooperation or evidence that challenges the existing narrative;
• inaccurate records remaining in circulation after families have disputed them;
• unclear amendments, missing version histories and difficulty establishing who created or changed important information;
• professional confirmation bias preventing credible alternative explanations from being properly considered;
• distress, fear, trauma or disability-related communication being described as hostility, aggression or non-cooperation;
• poverty, housing conditions or unavailable support being treated as evidence of neglect without sufficient consideration of the surrounding circumstances;
• requests for early help being missed or delayed, followed by families being blamed when circumstances deteriorate;
• potential risk being treated as though it were established harm;
• historical concerns continuing to influence current decisions without sufficient reassessment;
• more intrusive intervention being considered before practical support, family networks or less-intrusive safe alternatives have been properly explored;
• families being excluded from decisions or receiving reports too late to correct important factual errors;
• incomplete responses to information requests and poorly explained redactions preventing families from understanding or challenging decisions;
• information being shared between agencies without its original source, disputed status or later correction remaining clear;
• complaints being interpreted as hostility or a refusal to cooperate;
• families fearing that challenging a decision could negatively affect the way they or their children are treated;
• complaint investigations being delayed, misdirected or insufficiently independent;
• internal safeguards protecting previous decisions or professional reputations instead of openly reconsidering whether mistakes were made;
• children being placed in unsuitable or unregistered accommodation because appropriate placements are unavailable;
• the knowledge of foster carers, kinship carers and family members being overlooked;
• children’s wishes, feelings, relationships and lived experiences not receiving sufficient weight;
• voluntary arrangements being presented without families fully understanding their legal position or rights;
• inaccurate, incomplete or insufficiently balanced information being placed before courts, panels and other decision-makers; and
• councils failing to demonstrate publicly how repeated complaints and identified failures have led to measurable improvement.

I do not believe that every council, Social Worker or other professional acts improperly. Many professionals undertake difficult work and genuinely try to protect and support children.

My concern is that the same types of problems appear capable of developing across different councils because the systems intended to prevent, identify and correct them are not consistently strong, independent or transparent enough.

For that reason, I believe the problem is systemic across the wider children’s social care system. This does not mean that every council fails in every case. It means that councils across the UK may be exposed to the same structural weaknesses, and families currently have no reliable national mechanism for establishing how widespread those weaknesses are.

What May Still Be Unknown

I identified this breadth of interconnected concerns within just one council and through just one family’s experience.

This is also before I have received all the information sought through my outstanding Subject Access Request. That information may provide further insight, clarify what happened or reveal matters that are not currently known.

I will represent future information and official findings fairly, including anything that changes or qualifies my present understanding.

The fact that important information remains unavailable is itself part of the problem. Families cannot effectively understand or challenge decisions if they cannot access the records, communications, information-sharing history and audit trails behind them.

Why Existing Safeguards Are Not Enough

My experience has shown me that it is not enough for a council simply to have complaints procedures, Independent Reviewing Officers, managers, Quality Assurance, information-governance teams and senior leadership structures.

Those safeguards must work in practice.

They must be capable of:

• testing allegations against reliable evidence;
• distinguishing professional opinion from verified fact;
• identifying and correcting inaccurate information;
• challenging institutional assumptions;
• providing transparent reasons for significant decisions;
• protecting children’s relationships with their families where it is safe to do so;
• investigating complaints independently and without retaliation;
• identifying patterns across different cases;
• holding professionals and senior leaders accountable; and
• taking coordinated responsibility when several parts of the system fail simultaneously.

Families should not have to move repeatedly between departments, chase unanswered correspondence and approach numerous oversight bodies before fundamental questions about evidence, safeguarding decisions and accountability are properly examined.

Our Call for an Independent Inquiry

If this pattern can develop within one council, and similar concerns can be seen in information and reports concerning other councils, we must establish how widespread the problem really is.

That is why I am calling for an independent UK-wide inquiry into children’s social care across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The inquiry should:

• hear directly from children and families while protecting their identities;
• examine anonymised experiences alongside council records and official findings;
• investigate recurring problems across different local authorities;
• examine whether complaints and oversight systems are genuinely independent and effective;
• identify whether councils are learning from mistakes or repeating them;
• investigate the influence of resources, workforce pressures and placement shortages on decision-making;
• determine whether inaccurate or disputed information is being properly corrected;
• examine whether existing regulators have sufficient powers and coordination;
• recommend enforceable national reforms; and
• establish a transparent system for measuring whether those reforms produce meaningful change.

My purpose is not to expose children, families or individual workers. It is to establish the truth, improve accountability, protect family relationships and ensure that organisations exercising significant power over children and families are themselves subject to meaningful independent scrutiny.