ITV News has broadcast powerful testimony from a current local authority case officer describing working inside a toxic culture of deliberate instruction, obstructing vulnerable children from accessing statutory SEND support. Please share this article with your MP.
Measure What Matters has issued a special report to accompany this broadcast, setting out what has been found over eighteen months of investigation, what was submitted to ministers and when. Finally – they write why the Government’s proposed SEND reforms are premised on fundamental assumptions about public services that today’s broadcast has demolished, and what must now happen.
“Left to itself, power moves to protects the institution, not the child”
Earlier this year, Measure What Matters wrote on Special Needs Jungle that the failures in England’s SEND system were not the product of strain alone, but of conduct. That the law was not failing, but being systematically undermined from within by some of the very same authorities charged with upholding it. We said the pattern of conduct we were seeing pointed, in at least some cases, to something deliberate.
Today, that conclusion has been confirmed directly from the inside as ITV broadcasts a whistleblower’s testimony, a serving local authority case officer. Someone who sat inside a SEND service, watched what was happening, and decided it must be exposed.
A system instructed to harm
What they described is not a system under pressure but a system under instruction.
// Staff instrcuted to slow-roll written responses to families. To delay EHCP processes, not because of workload, but as a deliberate operational strategy. Colleagues joking about the refusal rates they had achieved—refusals to even assess a child—the same type of unlawful decisions that are overturned in 98.4% of appeals to the SEND Tribunal.
Officers told, explicitly, not to put their objections in writing, in case a Freedom of Information request ever revealed them. You read that correctly: Local authority officials instructed not to leave a written record of dissent, because transparency itself had become a risk to be managed.//
What we are told is a service in crisis is, in fact, a service that has taken the children it exists to support and reclassified them as a problem to be contained; an adversary to be denied.
A brutalised system, entirely detached from the harm its decisions inflict. Harm on vulnerable children in crisis.
And there is a word for what that instruction— //“keep it out of writing, in case anyone ever asks…” // —actually is.
“She said: “There is a real push for us not to see these parents in person, not to have those meetings, not to make the phone calls generally, not to ask for their opinion and to be quite cold and hardline on it.”
Romilly Weeks, ITV
“They don’t like you to have that relationship with the parent, really, because they don’t want parents to have information”, she added.
The whistleblower said staff were advised not to leave a paper trail when contacting families, or follow up with a call or email.
Instead, she said: “They like to communicate verbally via Teams meetings and then without any follow-up correspondence.
“That way, unless someone is taking a transcript of that meeting, there is no evidence to back it up or to prove anyone said that.”
Operating on baser instincts
Too often, it has been the instinct of public power to conceal its own unethical and, in some instances, unlawful conduct. It is this instinct that surfaces in almost every public service scandal this country has endured: under pressure, and to protect themselves, public bodies seek to control the record and blame the people they have failed. It is precisely the instinct the incoming Public Office (Accountability) Bill, commonly known as the Hillsborough Law, was written to defeat, through a statutory duty of candour on every public authority.
The issue? A repeated reality that an institution will always defend itself first—even against the people it exists to serve. A lived reality, the experience found at the heart of every public service crisis, and one that over a thousand testimonies have illustrated playing out in real-time, in council Children’s SEND Services up and down the UK.
What connects these public service crisis events?
- A public body fails the people it exists to serve.
- It then moves to protect itself, controlling the narrative, suppressing what it knows, and reframing the victims as the problem. At Hillsborough in 1989, the fans were blamed. In Rotherham, abused children were disbelieved for decades. For years before the 2017 Grenfell fire, residents’ warnings had been ignored. In the Windrush scandal, the very records that proved people’s rights were destroyed. In Mid Staffordshire, appalling neglect at Stafford hospital was concealed behind the language of targets and performance. And now, in SEND, families are recast as “deficient parents”, “sharp-elbowed”, “over-anxious”, or “vexatious”. Anything but what they are: people telling the truth about their vulnerable children, and about the harm being inflicted by public officials breaking the law. With impunity.
In each crisis, there is another troubling theme. The truth is available, but not acted on for years. Because acting on it is against the institution’s interest. Institutions protect institutions.
And in every catastrophic service breakdown that has, eventually, been held to account, the lesson can be generalised beyond one body to a universal principle:
Public power will hide its own failures unless the law compels honesty.
The thin line that really matters: where maladministration becomes misconduct.
In our view, everything turns on one distinction. It is the distinction this Government has spent 18 months abjectly refusing to acknowledge.
A system under strain is trying to help and failing. The people in it want to do right by the child; they are beaten by workload, by funding, by numbers too big for the hours in the day. That is real, and it deserves sympathy and resources.
But it is not the whole story. It is not reflective of the harrowing lived-experience of thousands of children and families, and it is not what the whistleblower described.
What they described is a system trying not to help. Where the effort, the planning, and the instruction all pointed one way: away from the vulnerable child. Where staff were not failing despite their best efforts, but obstructing because that is what they were directed to do. What their processes and internal structures have created. Barriers, not access. Denial, not support.
So, when does a system under strain become a system that has simply decided not to comply? When does a missed deadline become a strategy? When does an erroneous decision become intentional? When does maladministration become misconduct?
As of today, this is no longer a rhetorical question.
A system doing its best does not tell its officers to keep their doubts out of writing. It does not quietly lift provision and advice out of reports or court bundles and wait to see if anyone notices. It does not treat a child in crisis as a cost to contain, or a desperate parent as an opponent to exhaust. Or to silence.
Those are not the failures of people who ran out of road.
They are the choices of an institutional culture that picked a direction.
We have been saying this for a year and a half
This did not come from nowhere. Since 2024, Measure What Matters has identified, isolated, and investigated exactly this conduct, and we have placed the evidence, repeatedly, in front of those with the power to act.
- In February 2025, a small group of Surrey MPs first raised evidence of serious local authority misconduct directly with the Secretary of State based on our early reports.
- By July, over 100 testimonies of unlawful and dishonest behaviour by local authorities in relation to SEND had been handed to the DfE. By autumn, 600.
By early this year, over 1,253 testimonies—thousands of pages, families across 134 local authorities—were placed formally before ministers by Chris Coghlan MP, with one clear message: you cannot weaken children’s legal rights in the middle of evidence like this.
In February 2026, on the eve of the Schools White Paper, we published— with The Times—an investigation into how this maladministration had featured in the deaths of neurodivergent children. We examined 35 such deaths; 25 are documented in detail.
We found that no one—not the Department, not any national body—had ever even counted how many children with an EHCP have died by suicide following evident, prolonged maladministration. It transpired that no one was even counting.
Later that month, Chris Coghlan MP, led an adjournment debate that set out our findings and put the testimonies directly to the Minister — sharing, in devastating detail, the experiences of three families who have lost a child to suicide following years of local authority maladministration and misconduct. The speech has since been viewed more than a million times and met with thousands of comments describing the same thing: not overwhelmed but well-meaning services, but institutional denial, unlawful conduct, and a devastating cost to children and their families.
Yet, at every stage, the Ministerial response to these concerns regurgitated their pre-determined ‘reform’ agenda. It did not engage with the conduct. Expressions of regret, then a pivot back to the programme. The “adversarial” legal framework must go. Tribunals are cumbersome. Local authorities will be trusted—they simply need more flexibility, more resources, more discretion.
The one thing that works—and the plan to remove it
But here is what the families who have children with SEND already know. In account after account in our database, there was only ever one type of situation where the system actually worked. One moment that the EHCP refused for two years was finally issued, the placement fought over for eighteen months was confirmed within days.
That moment was when a judge became involved.
Not a manager.
Not a complaints panel.
Not the Ombudsman.
Not Ofsted.
A Judge.
In the vast majority of accounts we hold, it was only the eventual intervention of our judicial system that kept a child safe. In some cases, kept them alive.
This is the mechanism this government’s reforms would restrict.
And it is perhaps no accident that the people who want it gone are the people it holds to account.
In November 2025, the President of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (incorrectly) told her national conference that it is wrong for a tribunal to be able to “overrule a professional, multi-agency assessment and direct a local authority” — and that until the law changes, “nothing of significance will change.”
In the context of ITV’s footage, we must read that for what it is. It’s not a claim that the tribunal has failed, but a demand that an authority’s own decision be final, beyond the reach of a judge.
Even when the decision was the product of a system built to deny, unlawfully. Fundamentally legally flawed, in 98.7% of all tested cases.
Council leaders don’t want the tribunal gone because it doesn’t work. They want it gone because it does.
And the data on appeals tells the same story from the other direction. Families challenge only a small fraction of these decisions. Not because the decisions were correct, but because, as our colleagues here at Special Needs Jungle point out, most simply do not have the capacity, or the knowledge, to fight them.
The premise has collapsed
This matters because the reforms currently under consideration do not merely change how support is delivered. They change who holds power when disputes arise. They redirect authority away from independent oversight and towards the very same institutions now facing serious allegations of deliberate obstruction. That’s no technical adjustment.
It is a fundamental, constitutional shift; a choice made in the machinery of our systems, not just the rhetoric.
A set of powerful, co-produced, enforceable rights, replaced by an administrative, potentially meaningless, document the law requires to exist but not to be honoured. With the judge removed from the room.
Every reduction in legal protections rests on a single assumption: that local authorities can be trusted to do the right thing without oversight. That it is the law that is the friction in an otherwise willing, ethically sound, child-focused system.
If you were in any doubt after all the evidence we have gathered, this whistleblower’s testimony destroys that assumption.
You cannot free an institution that was never trying to help. And to strip away judicial oversight now—knowing what the evidence shows, knowing what happens to a child when that protection is gone? That is not reform. It is using the evidence of a broken system not as a reason to fix it, but as cover to remove the duty to.
It’s not all LA officers…
It is important to acknowledge that this is not about the actions of every authority, or every officer. We recognise, and indeed, our evidence reflects, that many staff members working within these services are overwhelmed, under-resourced, and fighting to do their best for the children they know need support. Some are heartbroken by what they are asked to do. Some are the very people who have come to us, unable to raise the alarm through any safe route of their own. Some will be reading this today, experiencing that same moment.
Today’s brave case officer shines a light not on the people inside this system, but on what has been done to it. A window into a culture, set from above, that took officers who came into this work to help children and directed them to obstruct them instead.
We are very clear: the failure here is not one of individual will. It is, in fact, something far more profound. And far more harmful. It is one of leadership, of governance, of the failure of accountability frameworks and of a system that has been quietly reorganised around the avoidance of its own legal duties and the subsequent deflection of their failures.
That is where responsibility lies. And that is where intervention is required.
But this is the very point. The law was never intended to protect against the actions of the many. It exists to check the few—to ensure that even a public authority can be made to comply, and that there is a line that cannot be crossed.
For this Government to weaken that protection, in the face of everything now on the record, is nothing short of unconscionable.
What has to happen now
In our view there are three things that are the minimum the evidence now demands.
- Immediately withdraw any reform that restricts access to independent judicial oversight.
Not review it. Not pause it. Withdraw it.
The Government’s own logic gives no legitimate reason to dilute legal rights. If their reforms work, families will rarely need them. Yet if they fail, the current legal framework is all that could still stand between a child and an authority willing to break the law. Deliberately. As it stands, families will be left with nothing but a complaints process that cannot compel anything. Administered by the very institutions it is meant to hold to account. A process with no teeth, marking its own homework.
- Hold a public inquiry into the serious maladministration of Children’s Services duties across England.
The evidence demonstrates serious, widespread issues with governance, legal compliance, conduct, and serious maladministration across multiple local authorities. At worst, some of the testimonies submitted to us would appear to describe actions and behaviours that meet the criminal threshold of Misconduct in Public Office. They should be addressed and investigated as such.
Undoubtedly, taken together these represent a widespread, serious breakdown in public services with catastrophic implications for thousands of children and young people that can no longer be conscionably ignored.
“But a position in which unlawful, unethical and harmful conduct and decision-making directly impacts children, yet carries no personal consequence for anyone, cannot stand”
- Compel real accountability
This is where this Government’s focus must now centre. Accountability mechanisms must exist that compel honesty, that compel absolute compliance with the law.
The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman can find maladministration but not misconduct. It cannot sanction those responsible, nor compel an authority to investigate its own. Internally, referral to a council’s own Monitoring Officer, is discretionary and self-policed; effectively, asking an institution to investigate the culture it created. And despite the risks, and the vulnerability of those involved, senior officers directing these decisions answer to no professional regulator at all.
We do not claim there is one simple answer. But a position in which unlawful, unethical and harmful conduct and decision-making directly impacts children, yet carries no personal consequence for anyone, cannot stand.
A robust framework must now be developed, and these options considered in the open:
- Mandatory referral of misconduct for independent, publicly reported investigation.
- Personal accountability at leadership level as seen in other regulated services, so that responsibility falls where the culture is set, not on those instructed to enact it.
- The professional regulation of all senior Children Services decision-making roles, including SEND — so that those who break the law in the exercise of power over a child may, as in every comparable profession, lose the right to do so.
And to those still inside it
The officer who spoke tonight did not act alone. Others have come to us—case officers, educators, professionals—people who have seen the same things and found no safe way to raise them, because their concern is not a rogue colleague, but the culture itself. And you cannot safely report concerns about culture or working practices to the very institution that built it.
We are building a route for exactly that situation. Confidential. We will not know who you are unless you tell us, and we will share nothing without your consent. You do not have to remain silent.
“Left to itself, power moves to protect the institution, not the child”
In 2014 the promise this country made to its most vulnerable children was simple: at the point of greatest need, help will be there. The Children and Families Act, 2014 explicitly promised to “put children and families at the heart of the system”.
We have learned how deliberately that promise may have been broken. For children, for families, for teachers, the evidence has always been there. And now, the whole country can finally see it.
The ITV lunchtime article is here, and it will have a longer report on Friday evening (3rd July 2026)
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Also read:
- WEBINAR RECORDING! The implications for children’s legal rights to EHCPs and EOTAS of the Government’s SEND proposals
- When things go right: Shining a light on SEND Practitioners making a positive impact [Giveaway!]
- From suspicion to support: why the Government’s child protection reforms matter for disabled children
- Have your say on the future of transport for disabled children and young people
- Unison voices major concerns over SEND reform health plans for sick and disabled children out of school in the EOTAS consultation
- Top Tips for the EOTAS & EHCP consultation: Protect your child’s rights to statutory SEND support
- REGISTER NOW! WEBINAR on the Government’s plans to cut EHCP and EOTAS rights. With SNJ & SEND legal charity, SOS!SEN
- Navigating constraints: Why a former PCF chair thinks the current model is missing the mark for families
- Dear Secretary of State for Education, Lucy Powell: an Open Letter from Special Needs Jungle and SEND legal charity SOS!SEN
- Research: Disabled young people define inclusive education as “learning in the place that’s right for them”
- Why every child deserves Portage, wherever they’re born
- Mainstream SEND Funding: A simple explainer, another consultation, and why it really matters
- The toxic culture of obstruction that’s taken root inside England’s council SEND services is not only unchecked, it’s encouraged
- EHCPs 2026: A relentless rise, but who’s surprised? Plus SNJ’s annual LA Hall of Shame
- The relentless march of SEND reform only hears views that fit the narrative
- The Government thinks Ofsted will ensure SEND reform accountability. This evidence suggests ‘significant concern’.
- Not in our name: How manufacturing consent for proposed SEND reforms has broken the social contract.
- Are SEND lawyers REALLY opposing the Government’s reform proposals just to protect their “vested interests”?
- Rights on paper, not in practice: What the legal aid cuts warn us about the Government’s SEND reforms
- Part 2: The Testimonies. Children died; the system looked away. Will government SEND reforms make this scandal even worse?
- Children died. The system looked away. Today, the Government is calling the human cost of cutting rights, “reform” [Part 1]
- Why the Government’s “SEND conversation” fell flat with parents: It’s failing to learn from voices of past experience
- MP says the abuse of SEND law is a “systemic, moral and ethical crisis” and schools must speak up
- The missing evidence of systemic maladministration in SEND—Teachers speak out Educators, share your experiences!
- Boost support for children not in school, develop EOTAS guidance, and fund schools to be needs-led, say Ofsted and CQC inspectors
- Chris Coghlan MP: LAs’ “lawbreaking, gaslighting and lying” is wrecking thousands of children’s lives
- The law on SEND isn’t failing, it’s been systematically undermined from within, says independent public accountability group
Key Content
Let's write the true narrative of the SEND reform proposals: We want your unfiltered-by-AI viewsJune 23, 2026
REGISTER NOW! WEBINAR on the Government's plans to cut EHCP and EOTAS rights. With SNJ & SEND legal charity, SOS!SENAugust 17, 2026
When “fine” at school isn’t fine at home: the hidden cost of autistic masking on familiesJune 16, 2026
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- The toxic culture of obstruction that’s taken root inside England’s council SEND services is not only unchecked, it’s encouraged - July 3, 2026
- Not in our name: How manufacturing consent for proposed SEND reforms has broken the social contract. - March 23, 2026
- Part 2: The Testimonies. Children died; the system looked away. Will government SEND reforms make this scandal even worse? - February 23, 2026
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