The Story Behind This Petition

 

I am a Father. I went to the family court for one reason only. To stop the mother of my children cancelling my one day a week Sunday visits at short notice. That is all I asked for. What followed has destroyed my life and separated me from my children for three and a half years.

 

A social worker recorded a false entry in my six year old son's official welfare file, addressed directly to him, stating that his grandmother was raped by a white man and that his father is the product of that rape. Those statements are false. They were sourced from a private mental health crisis communication I sent explaining my Anglo-Indian colonial heritage.

 

They were recorded as established biographical fact without verification, without welfare purpose, and without any connection to my children's safety. They do not belong in a child's welfare record under any professional, legal, or ethical framework. Furthermore my right to speak about the sociological and historical events that shaped my heritage and my identity is expressly protected under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights which guarantees freedom of expression.

 

That protection does not evaporate because the audience is a social worker. A mental health crisis communication in which I exercised my Article 10 right to speak about the colonial violence that shaped my Anglo-Indian heritage cannot lawfully be extracted, stripped of all context, and recorded as a safeguarding risk in my child's welfare file. The local authority's own Senior Legal Adviser subsequently defended that entry as entirely appropriate in formal legal correspondence.

 

A false court order (a non molestation order) was recorded in official documents and communicated to police intelligence systems, schools, and security vetting authorities. This order has never existed. Not at any stage. Not by any court.

 

I informed the local authority on multiple occasions over two years that this order did not exist. They maintained the false record regardless. When I raised this with the police the suggestion was made that the social workers may have been confused about the conclusion of the court case. 

 

I want to address that excuse directly. A non-molestation order is made under Part IV of the Family Law Act 1996 by a family court judge following a formal application and hearing. No such application was ever made. No such order was ever granted. No such order exists on any court record anywhere.

 

A registered social worker whose daily professional work involves the family court system is a subject matter expert in these instruments. They know what a non-molestation order is. They know how one is made. They know whether one exists. If a social worker records that such an order exists when it provably does not they are not confused. They are either fabricating a judicial instrument in official records or they are operating at a standard of professional knowledge so catastrophically below what Social Work England Professional Standard 4.1 requires that they should not hold registration.

 

Social Work England Professional Standard 4.1 requires every registered social worker to act within the law and to understand the legal framework governing their practice. There is no version of confusion that is consistent with that standard. Confusion is not an excuse. It is an admission of professional failure so fundamental that it calls into question the fitness of the individuals involved to practise.

 

Unlawful emails were sent to my children's schools telling staff I could not see my children. There was no court order. A court directed welfare assessment completed by the local authority's own social workers confirmed no safeguarding concerns against me. The local authority then pursued a formal child protection investigation against me to retrospectively justify those unlawful emails.

 

They abandoned their position that I was a risk to my children the moment I identified in writing that the emails had no court order behind them. A genuine safeguarding risk does not vanish because a parent writes a legally coherent letter. The abandonment of that position is the clearest possible evidence that the risk was fabricated.

 

I have seen my disabled daughter, who has autism and significant additional needs, five times in three and a half years. I see my seven year old son for approximately two minutes after school. There are no court orders preventing me from seeing my children. No court has ever made any adverse finding against my parenting. 

 

Four independent NHS clinicians across 187 clinical records spanning two years document that my diagnosed condition was caused directly by the local authority's conduct. I was placed under Winchester Community Mental Health Team care including critical care involvement. The local authority's conduct pushed me to the brink of suicidal ideation.

 

I have raised this with every regulatory body available to me. Every single one has failed me. The Information Commissioner's Office has dismissed my data protection complaints three times despite acknowledging the seriousness of what occurred.

 

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) has not engaged meaningfully. Social Work England has the fitness to practise referrals in triage but has not progressed them.

 

The police initially failed to record a crime despite the evidence meeting the Crown Prosecution Service Full Code Test. 

 

My own Member of Parliament has ignored five letters over eighteen months. The alleged democratic system that is supposed to protect people like us is protecting the institution that harmed me.

 

This is not just my story. It is the story of thousands of families across England and Wales who have experienced fabricated records, unlawful restrictions, and institutional misconduct by social workers operating without accountability, without independent scrutiny, and without criminal consequence for conduct that would result in prosecution if carried out by any private individual.

 

What This Petition Is Calling For

 

This petition calls on the UK Government to introduce the following specific reforms.

 

Reform One - Mandatory Body Worn Cameras for Social Workers

 

Every social worker conducting home visits, welfare assessments, and professional communications with families in child protection proceedings must wear a body worn camera. The footage must be preserved and made available to the data subject through Subject Access Request. The absence of any independent record of social worker conduct is the environment in which fabricated records thrive. A mandatory recording requirement protects families from false accounts and protects honest social workers from unfair accusations simultaneously. There is no legitimate professional reason why social workers should be exempt from the independent scrutiny that police officers, security staff, and many other public facing professionals are now subject to as standard.

 

Reform Two - Mandatory Criminal Referral for Fabricated Official Records

 

Where a social worker is shown to have recorded demonstrably false personal data in official systems accessible to police intelligence databases, courts, or security vetting authorities, police must be required to investigate and refer the matter to the Crown Prosecution Service for a charging decision under the relevant criminal framework. This includes perversion of the course of justice at common law, misconduct in public office at common law, fraud by false representation under Section 2 of the Fraud Act 2006, and the alteration and concealment of personal data under Section 173 of the Data Protection Act 2018.

 

These are serious criminal offences. A private individual who fabricated a court order and placed it in police intelligence systems would be arrested, interviewed under caution, and charged. The fact that the individual is employed by a local authority cannot and must not determine whether criminal law is applied. Public office does not confer immunity from criminal accountability. The current system allows police to treat fabricated records by social workers as professional regulatory matters for Social Work England rather than as the criminal matters they are. That must change. 

 

Social Workers like any professional that holds a position of authority have laws, frameworks and policies they are bound by. There is no excuse for operating outside of these prescribed boundaries.

 

Reform Three - Mandatory Identification of Exemptions in Subject Access Request Redactions

 

Where a local authority or any public body redacts personal data in response to a Subject Access Request it must be required to identify the specific Schedule 2 Data Protection Act 2018 exemption relied upon for each individual redaction and to communicate that identification to the data subject.

 

The Information Commissioner's Office must be required to investigate all cases where a public body has redacted personal data without identifying a specific lawful exemption. The High Court in Ashley v The Commissioners for His Majesty's Revenue and Customs 2025 EWHC 134 KB confirmed that exemptions must be applied granularly with specific justification for each piece of withheld information. The ICO has dismissed complaints about precisely this conduct without engaging with that binding authority. The law must be clarified in statute so that public bodies cannot use vague appeals to the existence of redaction powers without identifying the specific exemption they are relying upon.

 

Reform Four - Mandatory Response Obligations for the ICO, LGSCO, and SWE

 

The Information Commissioner's Office, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, and Social Work England must be required by statute to provide substantive written responses to complaints that identify specific legal breaches with specific evidence. The current framework allows each of these bodies to dismiss complaints using generic threshold language without engaging with the specific legal arguments raised and without applying binding case law. A data subject who raises a specific legal argument supported by High Court authority is entitled to a response that engages with that argument. The current system of form letter dismissals that acknowledge the seriousness of documented breaches while declining to investigate them is not regulation. It is institutional protection of public authorities at the expense of the individuals the regulatory framework was designed to protect.

 

Reform Five - Independent Scrutiny of Social Worker Fitness to Practise Where Criminal Thresholds Are Met

 

Where a social worker is the subject of a fitness to practise referral and the conduct complained of meets the criminal threshold for misconduct in public office, fraud, or perversion of the course of justice, Social Work England must be required to refer the matter to an independent panel with powers equivalent to a professional tribunal rather than conducting internal triage. The current triage process allows fitness to practise referrals involving serious criminal conduct to be processed at the same level as minor professional errors. That equivalence is wrong. Criminal conduct by a registered professional must be assessed as criminal conduct not as a professional error requiring retraining.

 

Reform Six - Prohibition on Unrecorded Verbal Communications in Child Protection Proceedings

 

All communications between social workers and schools, police, vetting authorities, and other official agencies in the context of child protection proceedings must be made in writing and preserved. Oral instructions, telephone calls, and verbal communications that impose restrictions on parental contact with children must be prohibited unless confirmed in writing within 24 hours. The current practice of verbal instructions, which cannot be subject to data subject access requests, creates an invisible layer of professional conduct that is entirely beyond accountability. Written communication requirements must be mandatory not discretionary.

 

Why The Confusion Excuse Must Be Rejected

 

I want to address directly the excuse that social workers may have been confused or uncertain about the limits of their authority. This excuse must be rejected for the following reason.

 

Social workers have enormous power over the lives of families. They can separate parents from their children. They can place information in police intelligence systems. They can generate classifications that affect security clearances and careers. They can record information in a child's welfare file that that child will read when they reach adulthood. The exercise of that power requires precise knowledge of its legal limits. A social worker who does not know the difference between different judicial instruments, who does not know that only a judge can restrict a parent's contact with their children, who does not know that recording false biographical statements in a child's welfare file breaches the accuracy principle of UK GDPR, is not confused. They are not fit to hold the power their registration confers. The confusion excuse does not mitigate the harm caused by the exercise of that power without knowledge of its limits. It confirms that the power was exercised by someone who should not have held it. That confirmation is not a reason to avoid accountability. It is a reason to demand it.

 

Please Sign and Share

 

If you have experienced similar conduct by a local authority, if you believe that public officers must be held to the same criminal standard as private individuals, if you believe that fabricated records in official systems are a criminal matter not a professional error, and if you believe that the regulatory bodies established to protect individuals must do so rather than protecting the institutions that harm them, please sign this petition and share it as widely as you can.

 

This petition will be presented to the House of Commons, to the relevant select committees, and to the House of Lords. It has the support of Members of Parliament and peers who have been made aware of the systemic failures this case documents.

 

Every signature is a voice. Every share reaches another family who has been through the same thing and does not yet know that others have too.

 

Thank you for reading. Every word of this is true. And all of it is evidenced in the local authority's own documents.