This petition calls upon all East Riding MPs Austerity costing children’s lives 3rd lowest funded Authority where in one school 12 children have attempted to take their own lives . Children impacted by domestic violence, increase in parental substance misuse -self medicating a fragmented system with no joined up working failing children and young people - many ending up in care the impact on an already overstretched children service . 

The petition has been creating after a recent article published on Hull daily mail's website 'East Riding school where 12 children have tried to take their life in two months as head warns of mental health crisis' which highlights the severe and dire situation young people, families and services find themselves as a result of the Cost of Living Crisis. The article shares Hornsea Secondary School Headteacher Steve Ostler's warning that the school has faced over 200 safeguarding concerns in the past couple of months including students been hospitalised as a result of self harming and 12 students who 'made  a serious attempt to end their own life' .The full story can be read here.

We commend Mr. Ostler for speaking up and out as a Head Teacher, his leadership and team are exceptional and as difficult as this must have been for him to bring into the public domain, it’s necessary . Through a lack of resources , funding a lack of accountability , poor decisions ,a lack of early and preventative interventions we are in “crisis“ led Interventions . It’s morally wrong and we grow tired of hearing from some cabinet members and elected members who sit on committees (many reading from scripts) because we rarely hear from service users within those committees due to the micromanagement of some officers/ elected members who silence their “ lived experiences" of a fragmented system that is having so many vulnerable cohorts dangling off a Cliff or taking their own lives . If they don’t allow the parent and carer community then how can informed decisions be made as to where the money needs to be spent - when all those members have is an officers opinion . Quite frankly, it is tiring to continuously see “ apologies “ from some senior officers in the media who are willing to waste some of the public purse on external consultants to tell them where those areas of concerns are (if they don’t already know it on over £100k salaries, then they are failing service users) The scrutiny question that would then present itself is “ why are these individuals still in post?“ The East Riding of Yorkshire Council fosters a culture of little to no evidence of accountability for many poor decisions. The issues highlighted in the article are issues that are faced every day from broken families who often turn to volunteer run support groups for help ; the volume of contact to these full time volunteers is rising daily and they are tired of feeding this back .

As full time volunteers and as a parents of a disabled children (one of whom attends Hornsea Secondary school) we will lobby Central Government and will be making contact with Sir Greg Knight (MP for East Yorkshire) to present this petition in the House of Commons . We will be requesting a meeting with him in the hope he can raise these concerns as we are the 3rd lowest funded Authority in England. It is our hope that the new OFSTED framework delivers what it says it will do and we will be pushing our Local Authority to recognising that “ lived experiences “ should be at the heart of shaping our services and evidencing how service delivery is having impact and the best possible outcomes for our children , young people and their families.

We will get through this and we will do it by coming together as a community because we know as we have always known "It takes a village to raise a child".