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Square Peg Profile picture
Square Peg
@teamsquarepeg
Because one size doesn't fit all in education | EBE led, grassroots, strategic specialists in persistent absence + barriers to school attendance | #squarepegs
Sep 29 • 17 tweets • 3 min read
Since September SP has been involved in some pretty excellent conversations.

However, it is jaw dropping to discover how quickly the deficit based language about children, and more specifically parents / parenting / parent blame enters the room.

So let’s talk about that.

🧵 Tropes about parents include:

Broken social contract
Feckless
Uneducated
Inactive (either unemployed or physically unhealthy)
Pointy elbowed
Golden ticket seeking
Entitled (working class or middle class)
Immigrant or white who don’t value education

2/
Nov 17, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Watched one of those emergency services programmes the other day.

A 17 year old had sustained a life changing injury and broken his back completely.

The spinal trauma consultant broke the news to the football-mad young man who’d just signed a contract with a squad youth team./ His parents and he were in shock after the dramatic airlift rescue and immediate MRI.

The consultant told him he was almost certainly paralysed from the waist down. She paused and went on to explain he would still go on to live a full and independent life.

2/
Jul 16, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Hearing about a huge number of schools trialing or writing letters to parents about new stricter behaviour policy starter in Sept. These also encompass attendance expectations.

Let’s be clear. Sept 2022 was first academic year without Covid sanctions/threat of closure.

1/ As a result, kids started processing the pandemic with many displaying dysregulated or connection seeking behaviours.

Many found the demands of re-setting too much, most were unable to recognise why.

Trauma-informed responses were scant, leading to kids spiralling further.
2/
Feb 23, 2023 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
My kids’ primary school had ‘The Blue Room’. It was 7ft square. Bare. Blue walls. A high letterbox window and a lock on the door. None of the children wanted to go in there. If the door was open you’d see them naturally skirt as far away as they could. 1/ I went in once. It smelt of fear and urine. It was colder than the rest of the school. Every sense in me told me to bolt. I was 42yrs old. I didn’t fully know at the time what this room was for, but I knew it wasn’t a happy space. 2/
Feb 21, 2023 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
Another #parentview101 with suicide TW: “Reading about terrible comments and practices with children in school, reminded me of a meeting with the head of the exam board recently.” 1/ 2/ “My YP has a chronic disease and finds it so hard to be in school due to poor health. I wanted reassurance that they could help put something in place to support them in their GCSES.”
Feb 20, 2023 • 4 tweets • 4 min read
Received a message from a parent whose 12 yr old attempted suicide today, first day back from half term. Huge row over attendance. EWO beating down door. Kid fled. Turned up at sch, put into isolation, attempted suicide. Parent called to pick up. Told to go to A&E as CAMHS issue. At what point are we going to JOIN THE DOTS. Action - reaction. Cause - effect. Sanctions - consequences. Madness has to stop. What are we doing to parents and children? These are the roots of placing children at risk of country lines, family breakdown, truancy, exclusion, CAMHS.
Nov 18, 2022 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
“School staff expressed concern that parents were sometimes not sharing information about their children's difficulties at a sufficiently early stage. Parents, on the other hand, described feeling judged or dismissed by school staff.” bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bj… “Relatedly, some professionals observed that schools often formed assumptions about parents being ‘lazy’ or ‘not trying hard enough’ to get their child into school.” @AEPsychologists @SpcialNdsJungle @ASCL_UK @NAHTnews @NEUnion @childrensociety @CYPMentalHealth
Sep 13, 2022 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
A parent has shared a school attendance update: “To help parents decide whether they should allow their child a day off school when poorly, the NHS has
produced guidance on common illnesses.” 1/ “This guidance is available via NHS - 'Is my child too ill for school?' webpage and underpins our decision on whether the
reason provided for absence is to be authorised.” 2/
Sep 12, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Square Peg & @NotFineinSchool have been working with @educationgovuk on this. Great to see the tiered transparent model focussing on support. We disagree criminalising any family is the appropriate mechanism for upholding right to access education. We see & have lived how it plays out.
Aug 18, 2022 • 24 tweets • 13 min read
"...a recent report highlighted the problems they have in accessing services. It described support services as “buckling under pressure”, leaving children “ricocheting around services” which are “over-medicalised, bureaucratic, unresponsive, outdated & siloed”. "Services are organised by diagnosis, but medical psychiatric diagnoses are not a perfect science even for adults, let alone for developing children and adolescents, whose stress responses are subject to change."
Aug 16, 2022 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
“Perhaps even more damaging in the longer term will be the social, emotional and behavioural impacts of missing out on classroom learning and formative experiences during the lockdowns.” theguardian.com/education/2022… Consecutive Governments’ education policy has failed. That’s a bitter pill to swallow; an uncomfortable truth. This isn’t blame, it’s fact. Those in corridors of power scratch heads - where and why and how has it gone wrong? And what do we need to change? A few suggestions:
Aug 7, 2022 • 19 tweets • 4 min read
“The first and most obvious sign that teenagers are not coping is that they are absent — they are failing to come to school.” So much to reflect on in this article. Here’s the Square Peg take on things. 👇🏻 Good to see acknowledgment kids were struggling pre-pandemic & Covid exacerbated existing vulnerability & created new ones. Agree there is a vast difference between clinical anxiety & ordinary normal stress. Tik Tok led self diagnosis not helping.
Jul 15, 2022 • 10 tweets • 10 min read
As a fledgling org & with attendance & persistent absence largely ignored until we started campaigning in 2018, this has been an eye opening (if not intense) experience for Square Peg and all families wishing to raise their concerns about these areas in #SchoolsBill. But… …what it’s enabled is authentic & meaningful engagement & participation by the public with the Upper House. Parents & carers have been able to (and will continue to) exercise and leverage their power as constituents & grassroots lobbyists.
Jul 14, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Going through therapy, one of my biggest shame traps was around feeling angry. I’d been raised to be polite, obedient, considerate, amenable, accepting, ‘good’ at all times. When life went sideways & my family & I were catastrophically failed, I struggled with my dysregulated emotions. I was uncomfortable with advocating & asserting myself but was compelled to do so on behalf of my child.
Jul 14, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Presenteeism is anti public health and social responsibility. It increases community transmission & places clinically vulnerable groups at risk. It increases burden to the NHS. It’s poor form as some would say. itv.com/news/border/20… Under 100% attendance aspirations, advice to schools which flows to parents is they must send their child into school with Covid (or other symptoms such as conjunctivitis, tonsillitis, slapped cheek, hand foot & mouth etc).
Jul 14, 2022 • 16 tweets • 12 min read
“On not getting an invite to prom, Molly said: ‘I felt screwed over. It’s not my fault and I feel bad enough with this condition as it is.’

Molly receives treatment for Crohn’s every six weeks for an infusion treatment through a drip.” portsmouth.co.uk/news/people/po… ‘The medications wipe out her immunity and make her skin super sensitive to the sun,’ explained Claire.

‘She did an abseil [in May] which was an amazing thing to do.’

The pub landlord Scott added: ‘We’re helping someone in our community to raise awareness of Chron’s disease.’
Jul 12, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
‘Their proposals are simple. Start with an end to truancy laws. This sounds like the sort of thing that would have certain sections of the media & the small number of Tory party members who will pick the next prime minister coughing, spluttering…hot tea all over themselves.’ ‘The trouble is, coercion doesn’t work and it doesn’t help. Replacing it with something better might. That’s radicalism for you. Some might prefer to call it common sense.’
Jul 12, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Throughout this academic year’s data, the largest recorded reason for persistent absence climbing has been ILLNESS. Covid has been let loose and mental health is continuing to decline in both CYPs & the workforce. It’s time to find another way. Hand wringing over attendance data, conflating agenda, weaponising safeguarding rather than addressing & implementing SEND, CAMHS, social care, welfare & pastoral support is the problem here. But also, resisting irrefutable truth that many are in distress, overwhelm & burnout.
Jul 6, 2022 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
A note on morality policing. Yes, transparency is important. Yes, accountability is essential. Yes openness is fundamental. However, asserting motives that are slanderous & defamatory or which calls into question the credibility of our voice & work, that’s where the buck stops. Most at the mo are focussed on the SEND Green Paper. Mighty organisations & experienced SEND veterans are collectively turning their eyes on it and working hard to effectively challenge, debunk & evidence agenda. Rightly so. The implications in woolly writings pose new threats.
Jul 5, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
#parentviews101: “I’m dreading tomorrow - the ‘reward day’ that covid cancelled has suddenly reappeared- tomorrow & first I heard of it was last Thursday with my YP saying their ‘name wasn’t on the list’ - I called and left a voicemail querying this…” / “didn’t realise it was tomorrow it was due to happen though)…have had no response from school, now have a very sad subdued YP as all [their] friends are going and [they] don’t know what the plan is for the kids not going at school tomorrow either…” /
Jul 4, 2022 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
So much to agree with here. So much I ponder, talk about in policy meetings, challenge. “Need not diagnosis: Towards a more realistic language and understanding. The Michael Lewis Inaugural Lecture, LSBU” / stephenunwin.uk/thoughts-and-p… “‘That’s not what it is about.  For me, it’s not what I am experiencing, it’s what your writings might mean for public policy.  That's what concerns me.  And that’s not just about my daughter.’”/