Compensation to family after council took far too

REPEATED delays and not replying to e-mails cost a schoolgirl almost three months of special needs support, according to a report about her parents’ battle to get their daughter the help she needed, writes Amy Orton.

Leicestershire County Council agreed to pay the family £1,200 in compensation after the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) found fault in the way the girl’s requests for support were handled, and the time it took the authority to come up with an action plan.

The ombudsman found that while she did not miss out on education, the girl did miss almost 12 weeks worth of support because of the delays.

These were all caused by her family having to wait for the council to finalise her education health and care plan (EHCP).

The EHCP is a legal document which outlines in detail the extra support needed by some pupils with special or additional needs.

Statutory timescales state that plans should take 20 weeks from start to finish.

In this case, it took 22 weeks for the council to finalise the plan after drawing up a first draft.

The girl’s parents then opted to go to tribunal because they felt elements of care were missing from the council’s offer.

Further delays in implementing the agreed outcome following the tribunal were also looked at by the ombudsman.

In the end, the EHCP took more than a year from start to finish.

The council also accepted it was at fault for not responding to an unconfirmed number of e-mails relating to the girl’s care between May 2018 and March 2019.

The authority has also been ordered to arrange extra speech and language therapy sessions and an occupational therapist will also be asked to offer more appointments “to make up the time lost,” at the