IMPORTANT UPDATE!!! - A RESPONSE FROM SHEFFIELD CITY COUNCIL ABOUT OUR MARCH!! On Monday, 11 September 2017, 10:11, Walton Dawn wrote: 
 EMAIL SENT ON BEHALF OF DAWN WALTON Dear Chrissy I am writing to you as a matter of urgency following on from the serious concerns you have raised with Council Officers in my service, with me directly and in recent media interviews. Please accept our apologies this email was not sent on Friday. I am concerned about the cases which have been discussed and the issues which they potentially raise. With this in mind I would like to request from you details of all the cases which cause you concern. Once received, we will review all these cases individually. I would be very grateful to you when you send this information to us if you could let me know where these issues were previously raised, for example, with a Headteacher or a Governing Body so that we can also look into the robustness of these processes. We take allegations of this severity very seriously. Therefore I would be grateful for the information as soon as you are able to provide it to enable us to review these cases as a priority. I would be grateful if you could contact Zanib Mushtaq, telephone: 0114 2052597 to agree the logistics of how this personal and potentially sensitive information can be shared. Finally, I would like to let you know that representatives from the Council will not be attending your planned events on Saturday. However, we are very keen to meet with parents to discuss their concerns face to face and we will be organising a series of opportunities to enable this. These sessions will provide an opportunity for parents to meet with senior Council Officers and Elected Members they will take place in September and October of this year. We will ensure that information about these opportunities is shared with all SEND parents representative groups including Sparkle Sheffield. Yours sincerely Dawn Walton Dawn Walton, Director – Commissioning, Inclusion & Learning People Services Portfolio
Moorfoot 
Level 7, West Wing 
Sheffield
S1 4PL OUR RESPONSE!!!!! To Walton Dawn CC Drayton Jackie (LAB-CLLR) Ludlam Jayne L (CYP) Speechley Carly Liesje Dusauzay Dore Julie (LAB-CLLR) Today at 13:46 Dear Dawn, Thank you for your communication below. The content of which is noted, including the fact that your communication is a belated one that declines, after the 'Saturdays event,' my invitation, issued to the Council on behalf of and at the behest of Parents and Carers for the Council to field a representative/representatives at the said Saturday Protest March of 9th September 2017. This invitation to the Council come along and listen to, and take face to face questions, answer questions, take comments, complaints and suggestions, in the transparent public eye, was proffered to the Council, in response to the Council expressing that they wanted to hear from Parents and Carers directly and they and I saw the Protest March Speeches Section to be an ideal opportunity for the Council to walk the talk in this regard ab indeed to see and hear also from a very important group, if not these most important group so adversely affected- namely- the Disabled children themselves also. In reference to your identifying the Council's plans to hold a suite of 'consultations' in September and October coming, this is noted but please know that this intent and planning had been already shared with me and others, with the focus of the 'consultation' as present as being upon already taken place and behind closed doors discussions upon proposed changes and diminutions in Special Educational Needs Schools and IR Units and Behaviour Support Units to in the City of Sheffield and the Council's drive to mainstream the vast number of children with SEND Requirements, along with further reducing the number of children being allowed to have their statutory EHC Plans. It should be noted that well ahead of being obliged to go public with these concerns, I and Sparkle Sheffield and individual families sought desperately to bring these concerns and complaints to the Sheffield City Council and to be heard and to have redress ensue. All to no real avail. I note to, the reframing of what were already in-situ 'consultations' as being initiated as now ones to 'listen to Parents/Carers concerns ' with SEND representative groups 'including Sparkle Sheffield' being notified of these 'opportunities'. It is hoped that Sheffield City Council are not replicating old ways of deploying 'consultation' as means of mere spin or means of discarding concerns and complaints already shared over longevity with the Council, or indeed bypassing the hundreds of Parent Carers who have identified themselves and their experiences of concern and complaints against Sheffield City Council through Social Media, Petition commentary and through demonstrations and in the media. Sheffield Star Live on Saturday 9th September 2017 alone has had 24,496 views, the Sparkle Sheffield AutiTalk Channel to, went out live to a further 7,865 and with these, came responses of hundreds upon hundreds of threads of commentary, identifying adverse impact and harms, mirroring the Petition threads of parental and carer experiences, comments and complaints to. In addition, Child and Young People focus Groups have been operational, facilitating the children's voices and influence and their opportunity to share their direct experiences. All of this throwing light on the extent over longevity of the adverse impact the failings in SEND in Sheffield City Council has incurred Any reasonable and responsible Public Authority would not be hesitant in acknowledging these failings in their entirety, rather than seeking to down play them as administrative delays only and indeed would include these already available experiences concerns and complaints fully and transparently in their reviews, reflections, and in their ongoing transparent actions and commitment to right the wrongs. I say this because it presents yet again that the ploy to present an alternative reality is to the fore, as evident in your communication below, as you seem to want to present a revisionism of facts and a dispersal of 'blame' upon Governors and Schools, when in fact the primary faults for the failings lie with Sheffield City Council, who have a duty and a moral responsibility to safeguard Disabled children, meet SEND requirements and right their own wrongs first and foremost. It is fact that Sheffield City Council, as Sheffield City Council know, already have in their information domains the cases and complaints of concern. They already have the documentation, and much of it, they have held over longevity as this documentary evidence shows. The tactic of the Council, in the public eye, presents once again as one of feigning knowing about the abuses and failings and related cases. It is an old well-worn one in Sheffield and is no longer accepted accordingly. Spin and 'lip stick on a corpse approaches' shall not prevail, nor be bought into, where the safeguarding of Disabled children and their families and the righting the wrongs of failings, abuses and other harms is concerned. Do revert back to your SEND officers and your SEND Departments own documents and you will find what was already lodged and documented. This occurring even before the Parents/Carers felt they had no choice but to avail of their right to freedom of public expression and public protest due to the Council not only ignoring theirs and their Advocates and their Children's Advocates concerns, complaints and even offers to help to move things to a satisfactory solution over longevity. What Children, Parents/ Carers and their supporters want, is action and redress. They want the wrongs rights, not overtures to look into things-. They have coined a statement- Prove It; Fix It. This statement speaks for itself. Information you already hold is fastly moving into Legal Privilege information for these Disabled Children and their families, who have had enough, and who deserve their rights and entitlements and to be treated with dignity and respect as not only Citizens of the UK, but as the valuable members they are of our Sheffield Family. Please know, that Parents and Carers are strenuously saying that the days of behind closed door discussions on Council terms and under Council control is over, they want everything to be transparent, open and in the public eye, so that what has prevailed continues no longer. stress that they will continue to exert their freedom of expression and right to protest as and when they want and deem this to be necessary, to ensure all the wrongs are righted and to ensure that no Disabled child in Sheffield incurs any further or future ill-treatment and detriment, as well as to ensure that where reprisals might arise, these to, are exposed and challenged head on in the public eye. Having reverted back to Parents and Carers on the content of your email of this am, they ask me to relay to you that they are gravely concerned that as the Head of SEND for Sheffield City Council that you are not appraised of the serious failings and adverse impact of each and every one of the cases I referred to, and which the parents and carers themselves shared directly with the media, especially given that these are lodged within your Department, drawn to your staff's direct attention in writing and verbally and that you have requested from me, an external to the Council to provide to you, data already held by Sheffield City Council in your very own Data /Information systems. They are now worried that there are failings in the Sheffield City Council's Data/Information systems and that theirs and their children's personal information may have gone missing accordingly because of yu requesting information already held by Sheffield City Council I have sought to assure them, that this may not the case and that I would at their request and behest ask you to revert back to information requested by you below that was and is already in situ in Sheffield City Council. Once more thank you for your communication. The content of which, as I said, is noted. Kind Regards Chrissy Chrissy Meleady MBE Equalities and Human Rights