after serious allegations of child cruelty came to light<\/a>. Vulnerable children had to move out at short notice, their belongings hastily packed into black bin bags. They were sent across the country to new placements.<\/p>\nThe police began an investigation into alleged child cruelty and safeguarding concerns and this concluded after two years without any criminal charges being brought.<\/p>\n
The Maxwells were told by police there had been allegations involving Jonah. In one incident, he was said to have been roughly grabbed and shoved into his room by a staff member. They also found out a carer had allegedly been waking him up every two hours through the night to go to the toilet to avoid having to clean soiled sheets, which police said could be classified as child cruelty.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just wish I\u2019d been more pushy at the time and tried harder to get to the bottom of things. I really, really regret that I didn\u2019t do more,\u201d said Annette.<\/p>\n
Annette and Kevin Maxwell are pushing for stricter laws to ensure private Send providers are subject to the same levels of accountability as other schools. Photograph: Adrian Sherratt\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
Police later confirmed they were unable to interview the directors of the Aurora Group, who parents believed had questions to answer over cost-cutting that may have contributed to alleged abuse. Child cruelty legislation applies only to those who directly commit an alleged offence.<\/p>\n
St Christopher\u2019s was classified as a school, not a care provider, meaning it could not be investigated under legislation that might implicate both a corporation and individuals.<\/p>\n
Kevin said: \u201cOur kids have become a moneymaking tool for these companies, and they squeeze it, because they know that, ultimately, they can walk away. There has to be better accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n
The couple pursued civil action against Aurora, alleging a breach of Jonah\u2019s human rights. The company agreed to pay \u00a318,600 without admission of any guilt.<\/p>\n
The Maxwells are pushing for stricter laws to ensure private Send providers face the same levels of accountability and transparency as other schools.<\/p>\n
As part of sweeping Send reforms announced earlier this year, the government promised to \u201ccrack down\u201d on private companies running schools, imposing fee caps and minimum standards.<\/p>\n
Jonah playing with his mother at St Christopher\u2019s in 2015. The school was shut down suddenly in 2019. Photograph: SWNS.com<\/p>\n
Those in the sector said they had been raising the alarm for years and urged the government to create more state schools in the Send sector to wrest back control from private companies, which charge significantly more.<\/p>\n
Darren Northcott, the national officer for education at the NASUWT teaching union, said: \u201cThere is a big problem where public money which should be being spent on children, young people and the staff working with them is leaking out of the system in the form of profits and surpluses. That\u2019s not acceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said many Send schools, in the state and private sector, had become incredibly challenging places to work because of a lack of staffing or resources to deal with children with complex needs. He said staff were increasingly expected to accept violence from children as \u201cpart of the job\u201d and in some cases \u201cthe level of care and investment in staff falls short of would reasonably be expected\u201d.<\/p>\n
Hayley Harding of the Let Us Learn Too campaign said many parents were frustrated by the lack of Send places in state schools, leaving private providers as the only option for many. \u201cThere\u2019s a huge issue with local authority capacity and lack of planning \u2013 for so many years they have been firefighting, rather than actually planning for how many children need this,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody wants people making profit out of our children. But we want them to be educated, and that\u2019s often the only option available.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Aurora Group said it was the only B Corp accredited provider in the sector. B Corp certification is a private credential for for-profit companies that prove high social and environmental standards through independent evaluation. Aurora also said 96% of its services were rated by Ofsted as good or outstanding.<\/p>\n
The spokesperson added: \u201cSt Christopher\u2019s was in serious difficulties under different ownership and under close Ofsted scrutiny when we responded to a campaign to keep the school open. We invested substantially in improving staffing, facilities and overall provision.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe regret that we were ultimately unable to overcome the school\u2019s challenges, and we remain saddened by the circumstances surrounding its eventual closure in 2019. We did all that we could at the time to support the Maxwell family and wish them well.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe police thoroughly investigated the allegations and agree that we did all we could to support their inquiries. Police took no further action.\u201d<\/p>\n
The spokesperson said all the Aurora Group\u2019s profits were reinvested in establishing new schools in partnership with local authorities, bringing \u201crelief to families and making it far easier for children to go to school nearer to home\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Annette and Kevin Maxwell were nervous about sending their son Jonah to a residential home for children with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":756737,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-756736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=756736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/756737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}