Hello,

You may have seen the Department for Education's social media campaign focusing on school attendance.

The campaign encourages school attendance for "preventable" days of avoidable absence. Pictures of smiling children overlaid with simplistic phrases like:"This morning she was worried about school - but look at her now!".

Parents of children facing long-term issues attending school - "barriers to attendance" - wish that going to school was that simple.

For them, their child's absence isn't preventable. Still, schools and local authorities can take a different view, threatening fines and prosecution to frighten families into forcing their children into school at significant cost to their health.

Campaigns like this one enforce the message that absence reasons are trivial - and for families facing a lack of support and supporting children with long-term mental health issues, this message hits them where it hurts; further encouraging schools and local authorities to pressure school attendance where it isn't appropriate.

We support fellow parents with this petition: Urge the DfE to Withdraw the Harmful School Attendance Advertising Campaign.

It's a new petition and fast gathering pace. We have signed our support and ask if you will do the same.

The Department for Education need to start including the views of those with lived experience in what they do - because they don't currently - and it shows. Thank you very much if you can support this...

In other news, we have been planning our campaign activity for this year - more of that in our next update!

Here's the link to the petition: https://www.change.org/p/urge-the-dfe-to-withdraw-the-harmful-school-attendance-advertising-campaign/u/32268685