A Buckinghamshire mum will receive more than £1,000 and an apology from the council after her son, who has special educational needs, missed out on five months of education.
The issue has been described ‘frustrating’ by the mother, whose son was out of school from September 2020 to February 2021 due to delays in securing provisions for him.
Buckinghamshire Council admitted it made mistakes in its failure to provide education for the boy and has since undertaken a review of its provision for children with special educational needs.
This came as the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO), a councils watchdog, found fault with the way Bucks Council responded to the boy’s situation.
The boy has Autism and reached school age in September 2020.
Bucks Council agreed to conduct an education health and care assessment.
The mother, anonymised as Ms B, told the Council she wanted her son to attend a school with an additional resource provision.
An additional resource provision is designed to provide specialist and targeted support for children with long-term special educational needs.
The Council consulted with three schools in June 2020. Two said they could not meet C’s needs. School 1 said it felt it was unable to take C and School 1 did not have an additional resource provision.
As such, Ms B said she would not send C to School 1 because it could not meet his needs.
The Council consulted with schools that had additional resource provisions in September 2020. The mother’s preference was for Schools 2 or 3 because they had additional resource provisions for autism. Neither school said it could not offer C a place.
The Council emailed School 3 in January 2021 and confirmed it would fund an extra member of staff to support C.
C started at School 3 in February 2021 on a reduced timetable for three mornings a week. His time in school increased each week and in May 2021 he started to attend full-time.
School 3 told the Council it arranged the gradual increase in C’s attendance with Ms B.
In October 2021, Ms B complained to the Council that it did not undertake adequate statutory assessments before it issued C’s final EHC plan in December 2020, failed to request a social care assessment for C, did not specify the number of hours of occupational therapy C needed in his 2020 EHC plans, failed to provide SALT from September 2020 to September 2021, failed to provide occupational therapy from February 2020 to October 2021 and did not secure education provision for C between September 2020 and January 2021.
The report found that the Council’s delays meant C missed education provision and EHC provision between October 2020 and February 2021.
In total, he missed eleven term-time weeks of provision. Although four of these weeks were when schools were closed between January and March 2021, C could have accessed online learning, or attended School 3 in person as Ms B was a keyworker.
Ms B paid for C to have weekly tutoring sessions during this period. She was also put to time and trouble chasing the Council to fulfil its statutory responsibilities.
Anita Cranmer, Buckinghamshire Council’s Cabinet Member for Children’s Services said: “Buckinghamshire Council apologises for the difficulties the family experienced through the failure to secure provision for their child and has reviewed this case to make sure that the findings support continuous improvement to services for the benefit of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities.”
As a result of these admissions, the council took the following actions:
- Pay the mother £700 for the seven term-time weeks of education provision C lost.
- Pay £200 for the four term-time weeks of education provision C lost.
- Reimburse the mother for the term-time tutoring sessions.
- Pay £250 for the time and trouble she was put to chasing the Council and the frustration caused by its delays.
Source: Free Buck Press