Two major reports highlighting parental blame and Systems Generated Trauma
Following last week’s launch of Cerebra’s major research tackling the phenomenon of Systems Generated Trauma, this week has seen two important reports concerning directly relevant issues.
Adoption breakdowns
On Friday 28th November, BBC research was published, concerning the traumatising impact of blame and lack of support that adoptive parents’ experience.
The BBC programme, and its online article, strongly echo the distressing parental accounts recorded in the Cerebra research reports concerning Parent Carer Blame (2021) and ‘Systems Generated Trauma’ (2025). The BBC references parents’ accounts of ‘being sent on repeated parental training courses’; being ‘intimidated’; ‘fearing retaliation’ (if they spoke out or complained); being lied to (‘sold a lie’ as a social worker put it); having incorrect/judgmental data on their files; experiencing ‘gaslighting’; being ‘threatened with prosecution’ (including for ‘child abandonment’[1]); being arrested; and much more.
The BBC identifies the ‘standout theme which unites all the cases’ it has analysed, as ‘parents being blamed’. In relation to the question of ‘what needs to be done’ the call from parents is for ‘fundamental system change’.
The online article can be accessed by clicking here and the ‘File on 4’ programme by clicking here.
Carers Allowance clawback claims
On Tuesday 25th November 2025 the Government published an ‘Independent Review of Carer’s Allowance Overpayments’ – another report concerning a dysfunctional state system: in this case the draconian earnings rules for the Carers Allowance benefit. The uncontested evidence is that tens of thousands of carers unwittingly fall foul of these complex earning rules by just a few pounds – a systems’ failure that has been well documents for over six years. The report includes quotes from carers as to how the system made them ‘feel like you’re the criminal’ and to be blamed ‘for not understanding and acting on these complex structures and benefit interactions’ – that it was ‘like playing a game where only the other side knows the rules’. The report finds that the benefit overpayments were ‘caused not by widespread individual error by carers in reporting their earnings, but by systemic issues preventing them from fulfilling their responsibility to report’: ie a systems’ failure.
The Independent review can be accessed clicking here.
What needs to be done
The Cerebra research has identified very many systems, operated by public bodies, that ‘Generate Trauma’: generally these traumas are unintended but sadly, when they are identified it proves incredibly difficult to get the public body to remedy the defect – in IT language, to publish a ‘patch’ that removes the glitch.
In our 2025 report we refer to traumas created by social work assessment systems; by school attendance systems; by systems that generate accusations of parents ‘fabricating or inducing their child’s illness’; by systems that stop incorrect and very damaging data records being corrected; – as well as the two systems discussed above. There are very many other dysfunctional systems of this kind – systems concerning the process by which disabled children’s support needs fall away when they become 18; systems concerning the assessment of disabled children’s needs for Continuing NHS care; systems that frustrate families efforts to hold public bodies to account; systems that allow NHS bodies to operate openly discriminatory practices in relation to the fundamental support needs of disabled young people (such as their need for continence services) – it is a very long list.
While it is tempting (and perhaps inevitable) that we endeavour to tackle each of these Systems Generated Traumas’ individually, there is also a need to stand back and see the wider picture – particularly:
- the problem of getting governments to take speedy action to insert ‘patches’ when system defects are identified; and
- to accept responsibility for the complex systems that they have developed, and in consequence to provide meaningful support and advocacy to families who have to navigate them.
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[1] An ‘outdated’ and ‘particularly unfortunate’ offence for which it appears that there have not been any prosecutions for over 75 years’ – see L Clements Carers and their Rights (2018) para 12.20.
Photograph of ‘Golau-olaf-Pen-llyn’ by Richard Jones -@lluniaurich
Posted 28 November 2025