Community Callout
Your Experiences With Great Minds Together
We’re collecting first-hand accounts specifically connected to Great Minds Together (GMT) or another of Emma Manders businesses
If you’ve been directly affected, we want to hear from you.
Since publishing our recent investigation into Great Minds Together (GMT) and Emma Mander, our inbox has been filled.
We’ve heard from parents, care-experienced people, former staff, professionals, and whistleblowers — many of whom say they tried to raise concerns for years and felt ignored, dismissed, or left without a voice.
For many of you, this story isn’t theoretical — it’s personal. It’s lived experience.
We want to be absolutely clear: this page is specifically for those with direct experience of Great Minds Together.
We are asking for your stories
We want to hear from anyone who has been affected by, worked with, or raised concerns about Great Minds Together, its services, or its leadership.
- Placements arranged or delivered by Great Minds Together
- Conditions in accommodation linked to GMT
- Safeguarding concerns raised about GMT that were not acted on
- Experiences as a parent, carer, or care-experienced young person
- Experiences as a former employee, contractor, or professional working alongside GMT
- Concerns involving Emma Mander in a professional or leadership capacity
How your stories may be used
Your contributions help us build a clearer public record of how GMT operated in practice, understand real-world impacts on children, families and staff,
and inform future reporting and accountability efforts. We will handle submissions carefully, responsibly and respectfully.
Where to respond
You can comment publicly below or contact us privately if you prefer to share your experience confidentially.
Take action: sign the petition
Many readers have asked how they can help ensure this issue doesn’t fade away.
A petition calling for accountability, transparency, and stronger safeguards in children’s care is now live.
Adding your name — and sharing it — helps show that concerns about Great Minds Together and similar providers are widespread and serious.
This is not about speculation or rumours. It’s about real experiences, real consequences, and real people.
If you have been affected by Great Minds Together, we want to hear from you.
We’re listening.
Let me start by sharing my experience with her.
First, I was placed in a property with a private landlord that Emma or her husband found for me. She clearly did not carry out proper checks, as he turned out not to be a legitimate landlord. I was stuck there for two years in what felt like a complete hell hole. After just six months, he attempted to evict me, yet she did nothing to help me get out of the situation. Emma worked in housing at the time, so she absolutely should have known better — especially knowing the property was for me and my young child.
Secondly, I experienced her as a bully. She would say one thing to your face and something entirely different behind your back. She attended meetings about my child and told professionals that she did not believe I was fit to be a mother because of my ADHD and autism. She held private phone calls with my social worker and the independent social worker, saying she did not think it was a good idea for me to have my child. Meetings were arranged where I felt intimidated and targeted. She is very good at presenting herself as supportive while making others look like the problem. In my experience, she is highly manipulative.
To make matters worse, she portrayed me as a vulnerable adult, which I am not. Housing then treated me as such based on what had been said. There is far more I could say, but those are the key points of what I experienced.
Also under investigatiom from the pension regulators for non payment of pension contributions and also taking staff pension contributions and not paying those into the pension either. Not a professional organisation.
While under great minds togethers tear 3.5 program I was left traumatised they refused to listen to me and constantly told me lies and encouraged my parent to lie to me too, I expressed many times to Emma Mander that I was not comfortable with strangers in my house 24/7 but she did not listen this led to multiple police interventions which they claim to avoid and many times for my safety I should have gone to hospital but they refused to let the police take me. There solution to any problem was to just throw money at it and make fake promises. They claim to have a 100% success rate but they left me a vulnerable teenager more traumatised then I was before with a complete lack of trust in professionals and my parent. But that see this as a success? Emma Mander did not help, she hurt! At the time there was no complaints policy, as to complain you had to email Emma Mander but this was no help as she was the problem. They also took me to see another child to try and build a friendship but then on the journey back they used this child’s life as a threat by saying if I didn’t recover from my mental health difficulties I would end up like them and that is not acceptable. They also told this child personal things about me which I did not consent to and they told me personal things about the other child which I found very inappropriate and unhelpful.