The principles behind Jools’ Law are now included in the Crime and Policing Act 2026. This means that when a child dies, relevant online platforms must preserve their data within five days of being notified.
Ellen Roome’s son, Jools Sweeney, died suddenly in April 2022 aged 14. His death remains unexplained. Ellen has spent years trying to obtain information about his online activity, but she still has not received the data she is seeking
A mother, grieving the worst thing that can happen to a parent, had to fight a tech company just to stop that data from being deleted before anyone could look at it. For two years.
In July 2026, Ellen succeeded in having Jools’ original inquest quashed and a fresh inquest ordered. This did not give her access to Jools’ social media data. The new coroner must now seek the relevant information from the platforms, through Ofcom where appropriate.
Ellen’s fight for answers for Jools is therefore not over. The change in the law will help other bereaved families, but Ellen is still waiting for information that may help explain what happened to her son.
I’ve spent enough time in digital forensics to know exactly what that “no” actually means. The platforms may still hold relevant data, but Ellen has never been told exactly what remains available or been given access to it. I had my own version of this fight with the Ministry of Defence over records relating to my own case, and I recognised the pattern instantly, organisations like that treat data requests as a game. They bank on you either giving up or running out of road. Ellen kept fighting. She should never have had to fight for something that was already the right thing to do.
What Jools’ Law actually changes
Jools’ Law is the name campaigners gave to a set of amendments, led in the House of Lords by Baroness Beeban Kidron, to the Crime and Policing Bill. The core principle is simple: when a child dies, platforms must automatically preserve their online data within five days, so it can't be wiped before a coroner has the chance to request it as part of their investigation. It's important to be precise here, because I got this wrong in an earlier draft of this piece, the law does not hand data straight to parents. It stops the evidence from disappearing. Getting hold of it still runs through the coroner. The fact that Ellen is still not able to see the data 4 years later is a tragedy. She has helped future bereaved families, but she is still waiting for the information she has fought so hard to obtain. That is something that needs to be rectified, no awards are going to fix that for her.
That’s the plain-English answer. Here’s the accountability question underneath it: why did this need an Act of Parliament? Why did it need Baroness Kidron tabling amendments, cross-party peers speaking in the Lords, and eventually a phone call from the Secretary of State to one campaigning mother? Ellen was awarded an MBE for services to children’s online safety, recognising her wider campaigning and work to change the law. She has certainly earned it. But an MBE and two years of national campaigning shouldn’t be the minimum entry price for a grieving parent to get answers about their own child. That’s a platform successfully outlasting a family until Parliament forced its hand, and outlasting a grieving family isn’t accountability.
This is the same pattern I talk about with you constantly on here. Whether it’s a platform quietly weakening protections it applies elsewhere in the world, or refusing to hand over a dead child’s data unless dragged there by legislation, the throughline is the same, these companies will do the right thing when it’s forced out of them, and defend the wrong thing right up until that point.
I would like to personally thank Ellen for her time and effort to making sure that my post was accurate, it is important that all parents fully understand the intricacies that still exist, the social media platforms certainly will.
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Why this one was important for me
In my RAF Police years, I spent the best part of a decade in digital forensics, and a good chunk of that reviewing criminal and inappropriate imagery involving children. I won’t pretend that work leaves you unaffected, because it doesn’t, and it’s a large part of why I ended up medically discharged with C-PTSD.
When I read about what Ellen went through, my mind doesn’t go to the legal mechanics first. It goes to the faces. The children in those images had parents too, and I’ve thought more than once about how many of those parents might have had a different outcome, a different set of answers, or maybe even a child who was never harmed in the first place, if the platforms involved had simply done the right thing without being dragged kicking and screaming to it.
That’s not a comfortable thing for me to write. But it’s honest, and it’s the reason this blog exists.
What this means for you right now
If you're a parent, Jools' Law won't touch your daily life unless the worst happens, and I sincerely hope it never does. But it matters because it closes off one specific cruelty: platforms can no longer quietly delete a child's data before a coroner even has the chance to ask for it. It doesn't guarantee a grieving parent gets to see that data themselves, that request still has to go through the coroner, and as Ellen's own case shows, it can still take years. If you’re a teacher or a Designated Safeguarding Lead, it’s worth knowing this exists so you can speak to it accurately if a family in your school community is ever affected. Nobody should have to explain “data preservation policy” to a parent who’s just lost their child.
The takeaway is this: it should never take an Act of Parliament to make a platform do the decent thing for a grieving family, and the fact that it did tells you everything you need to know about where these companies’ priorities sit until the law forces otherwise.
If you or your family are struggling with anything you’ve read here, please don’t sit with it alone. Childline is there for exactly this.
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Sources
[1] Crime and Policing Act 2026, Royal Assent 29 April 2026, legislation.gov.uk. Accessed August 2026.
[2] “Ellen Roome, Cheltenham mum and social media safety activist, achieves landmark change in UK law”, SoGlos, 16 February 2026. Accessed August 2026.
[3] Jools’ Law, Parliament Campaign timeline, joolslaw.co.uk. Accessed August 2026.
[4] Ellen Roome MBE, King’s New Year Honours, as reported by SoGlos, 16 February 2026. Accessed August 2026.