‘Systems Generated Trauma’ Report 2025
A major research report ‘Systems Generated Trauma’ has been published by the disabled children’s charity Cerebra at a launch event in Westminster. It draws on over 10 years of research concerning commonly occurring problems that families with Disabled Children encounter: research involving a range of methodologies but always informed by the voices of families – over 1,200 responded to the survey underpinning this most recent project. The report and media material (including powerful interviews with families) can be accessed by clicking here.
The decade long programme has identified the root causes of many such ‘commonly occurring problems’ as well as the necessary action that needs to be taken to eliminate them. Almost always what is needed to be done, is straightforward – involving ‘system’ changes: changes to policy and practice guidance (guidance either written by national governments or adopted by them) – remedial action not dissimilar to software ‘patches’ that aim to resolve IT system glitches
Trauma as a common theme
What we have come to understand is that a common theme running through the research is the harm that families experience due to these dysfunctional practices; harm that families most commonly articulate using the word ‘trauma’ – profound harm in terms of mental health breakdowns, constant suicidal thoughts, fear – verging on terror: fear of losing their children, losing their jobs, losing their liberty – fears that are so powerfully described by parents in a series of personal accounts and in a short video and accompanying the report,
The new report zooms out and looks at the bigger picture that emerges from the many reports – the trauma that families experience due to the manner in which a public body responds to their request for support – for example:
- Guidance that requires social workers assessing a disabled child’s need for support, to treat parents who have asked for help as if they are abusers. To make unannounced visits; to insist on inspecting the children’s bedrooms and to interview them in the absence of their parent.
- Guidance that has resulted in staggering numbers of parents being accused of fabricating or inducing their child’s illness (FII).
- School practices that result in children with SEND being three times more likely to be the subject of permanent exclusions (compared to those without SEND) and perversely where education practitioners routinely threaten parents with prosecution because their disabled child is ‘school refusing’;
- Guidance that requires Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) practitioners to prioritise pursuing carers’ for repayment claims over ensuring that they are prevented from unwittingly falling foul of the draconian Carers Allowance rules.
An epidemic of poor mental health
We have a society that fails to realise that a major contributing factor to our current epidemic of poor mental health – especially for people living with disadvantage – is state action; state policies and practices; state guidance. Guidance that, in essence, instructs health, social care, education and DWP practitioners not to trust parents: that they should be prosecuted if they do not force their neurodivergent child to attend a hostile school environment or if they unwittingly breach of rigid benefit rules: guidance that mandates fundamental violations of families’ rights to respect for their private and family life and home: guidance that sanctions action that humiliates and makes many families vow to have nothing to do with public bodies – public bodies that were ostensibly created to support them.
Loss of trust
Loss of trust in public services was another recurring theme emerging from the survey responses. Trust once lost is hard to rebuild and loss of trust is contagious, opening up fault lines between front-line practitioners and families. Families becoming defensive, laconic, insisting on being accompanied by a friend or advocate at every meeting – believing (correctly) that pretty-well everything they say will be recorded and that these records can not be amended or erased even when shown to be demonstrably wrong.
Public sector realisation of this harm
The research also sought to understand the extent to which public bodies appreciated (or at least acknowledged) the traumas caused by their policies and practices.
It demonstrates very clearly that they do not: over 90% of public sector ‘Trauma Informed’ policy documents contain no acknowledgment that their practices can be a primary cause of trauma. This contrasts with the survey of parents in which over 90% said that the trauma caused by their treatment by public services was more severe than any other traumas they had suffered in their lives
In plain sight
We have a situation where the state is propounding polices that systematically traumatise swathes of the population – predominantly disadvantaged swathes – that this is done in plain sight – and yet it does not see (or at least it does not acknowledge) that it is doing this. AND, that when we draw this to the attention of those with power to effect change – ie Governments in England Wales and Scotland – (with a few honourable exceptions) nothing happens apart from the relevant department dispatching a bland, value signalling letter that resolutely avoids the specifics. As one speaker at the launch event observed – that the civil service is expert at using words to say nothing.
Cerebra and a coalition of disabled children’s charities are calling for fundamental change in the way public bodies treat disabled children and their families – recognising that many frontline public services workers are also being traumatised by having to administer these dysfunctional systems. Cerebra encourages families who have experienced harm while trying to get help from public services to make contact and to support the campaign – a form for this purpose can be accessed by clicking here.
Call for action
Cerebra’s call for action includes the reframing of ‘risk’ by freeing up frontline workers to the be empathetic and to understand how incredibly difficult societal barriers make it for families to care for and to support a disabled child. For public bodies to develop practices that actively aim to build relationships of trust and support; for public bodies to take urgent remedial action when social welfare systems are shown to have unintended adverse impacts; for genuine and accessible mechanisms to exist that enable families to hold public bodies to account when they fail to act in accordance with their legal obligations and (of course) much much more.
Photograph of ‘Foryd’ by Richard Jones -@lluniaurich
Posted 19 November 2025