The mental health champion dropped by the government believes that she was used as “window dressing” by ministers.
In her first interview since losing her role, Natasha Devon told The Times that she had been silenced after less than nine months in the post.
Ms Devon, 35, was appointed in August last year to help tackle child mental health problems. But after a series of controversial outbursts she was told this week that her unpaid role as adviser to the Department for Education was being made redundant.
The government will instead appoint an adviser on child and adult mental health across all departments, including education, health, justice and work and pensions.
Sources close to the DfE said that Ms Devon had been seen as problematic and out of control. Separate sources said that she had been too outspoken and had publicly embarrassed the health minister, Alistair Burt.
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Ms Devon had apparently asked for a meeting with Mr Burt after being appointed but none was arranged. When he told a conference of teachers and mental health professionals in Cambridge in March about her appointment, Ms Devon was in the audience. She allegedly stood up and said that she had tried unsuccessfully to meet the minister, before berating him about child mental health services.
After the event Ms Devon criticised at least three government policies in her column for the TES. She wrote: “At school, teachers are stressed, children are tested rigorously from the age of four, with little or no positive creative outlets for their emotions in the form of sport and arts.
“If they wish to go into higher education, they do so in the knowledge that they will leave with record amounts of debt. The NHS is on its knees, meaning that decent healthcare has become the privilege of those who dwell in the right postcode.”
Ms Devon has been asked to continue helping the DfE but not to comment any longer on its behalf.
She told The Times: “I feel to some extent my appointment was window dressing. I go into three schools a week and work with 500 teenagers. The department wants to continue to work with me but not in an official position.
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“They want my expertise but don’t want me to have a platform. Everything I said was not about me, it’s not my view that’s been silenced but theirs. I feel indignant on behalf of the young people and teachers because I was speaking on their behalf.”
She added: “What the government is doing is designed to tackle the symptoms not the causes . . . Lots of cases of poor mental health in children are as a result of changes to the education system and austerity.”
A source close to the DfE said that Ms Devon was appointed because they felt that it would “look good” to do something around child mental health, given criticisms of problems in the system. Increasingly it was felt that she was making too many controversial comments without evidence to back them up.
Norman Lamb, the Lib Dem health spokesman, said that he was concerned that people might be put off challenging the government for fear of how they might be treated.
A spokeswoman for the DfE said: “The department is looking into ways we can make sure young people’s voices are heard, as we develop policy.”