Apology for council’s care plan delays
Late decision caused ‘uncertainty’
The mother of a child with special educational needs has received an apology and £500 compensation from Slough Borough Council over its handling of the youngster’s education plan.
The mother complained to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman after facing long delays in securing an Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan for her son. An EHC plan is for children and young people aged up to 25 and sets out a child’s special educational needs and the support they need.
Slough Borough Council initially refused to carry out a EHC assessment for the child, who has undisclosed disabilities.
The mother successfully appealed this decision in August
2022 to the Special Educational Needs (SEND) Tribunal, which ordered the council to carry out an assessment.
Shortly afterwards, the council said it would assess the child’s needs but by the beginning of November the local authority had still not secured advice from an educational psychologist about the child’s case.
It eventually secured professional advice from the educational psychologist but this left the mother unhappy as a face-to-face assessment was not carried out with her son.
The council decided not to issue an EHC plan for the child the following month – a decision which the mother successfully overturned in December 2023.
The mother turned to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman to investigate the council’s handling of her case.
A decision by the Ombudsman, published this month, said: “The council should have taken its decision not to issue an EHC plan for child Y within ten weeks of the SEND Tribunal’s decision, so by mid-October 2022.
“The council issued its decision nearly two months later. This is fault.”
The Ombudsman added that the council’s failure to comply with statutory deadlines caused the mother and son uncertainty about his education, which was particularly important as he was being educated at home at the time.
The Ombudsman ruled the council should apologise and pay the mother £500 compensation.
A spokeswoman for Slough Borough Council said: “We have totally accepted the Ombudsman recommendations, including providing the suggested compensation and have already issued an apology to the family.
“The issues around this case occurred in 2022 and we have since provided training for all SEND staff to ensure that speech and language needs assessment advice, contributing to an Education Heath and Care needs assessment, are undertaken when necessary for young people who are not in an education setting and to ensure similar complaints are handled in line with the SEND Code of Practice 2015.”