Somerset County Council has been fined £2,000 after a young girl with special needs missed nearly six months of school due to delays in reviewing her care plan.
The girl, known only as Y, missed a substantial amount of mainstream schooling between September 2021 and February 2022 inclusive – during which time Somerset County Council fell short in giving her alternative education.
Her mother – referred to as Mrs X – formally complained about the council’s delays in reviewing her daughter’s education and health care plan (EHCP), which she claims led to Y suffering from anxiety and a decline in her physical health.
The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) has ordered the council to formally apologise and compensate the family for the distress caused, says the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
The ombudsman exists to investigate allegations of “maladministration” and “service failure” in the public sector – in other words, instances in which it is claimed councils have not fully carried out their legal duties to taxpayers.
Mrs X’s daughter Y had an EHCP from April 2020, which was designed to take account of her “medical and emotional needs” to allow her to have as normal an education as humanly possible.
The plan included Y having “a bespoke timetable with a high level of flexibility” and which allowed for “reasonable adjustments” so she could “access a broad and balanced curriculum”.
Y’s plan was reviewed on March 10, 2021, with her school sending its annual review on March 29 and the council writing to Mrs X to inform her of planned alterations to the EHCP on April 21.
These alterations include means for Y to access her lessons when she was too unwell to attend school (e.g. by audio recording), a weekly one-to-one session with a key adult (overseen by a teacher) and a monthly one-on-one session with a teacher.
The amended plan was not initially circulated until June 28, with Mrs X providing feedback and subsequently chasing up the council for an update – while raising concerns about the standard of education her daughter was receiving.
Mrs X claimed, for instance, that the school had refused to use an AV Robot (a device to live-stream a class to a pupil at home or elsewhere, which also allows the pupil to speak and participate in the class) due to “safeguarding concerns”.
Due to the anxiety caused by the plan not being updated, Y was too ill to attend school in September 2021.
While the council provided her with online A-Level course materials, she was only able to attend a handful of lessons due to illness, and was unable to complete her BTEC qualification.
The updated EHCP was finally issued on February 10, 2022 – nearly a year after the initial review meeting, and nearly six months after the start of the new school year.
The council told the LGSCO’s investigation that it had “struggled with staff sickness, retention and recruitment”, which meant it had not always been able to review EHCPs within the time-scale required by the Department for Education (DfE).
It did state, however, that its performance had improved in recent times, with 75 per cent of plans being issued within 20 weeks by January 2022 compared to only 41 per cent of plans in late-2020.
The ombudsman ruled that there “was fault” in how the council had handled Y’s plan review, stating that her support “would have been improved” by the issues being resolved in a more timely manner.
The ombudsman concluded: “The delays in considering Y’s needs and producing a plan that supported them, and the overall failure to meet her plan provision over the same period, represent fault that caused Y an injustice.
“Y is likely to have suffered anxiety and more isolation from not being well enough to attend school, that may have been limited had the situation been dealt with sooner.
“Y was without suitable education for much of the period between September 2021 and February 2022 because she was largely unable to attend school and suitable alternatives were not found to maintain her education.”
The ombudsman has ordered the council to pay £2,000 in compensation – £1,800 to Y and £200 to Mrs X – as well as formally apologising to both parties and reviewing progress it had made since the Ofsted and Care Quality Commission (CQC)’s joint inspection of children’s services in 2020.
The report concluded: “We made four recommendations for improvement in 2022/23 following findings of fault about adherence to EHCP time-scales or provision of alternative education.”
“We recommend the council reviews its progress towards improving these areas of its practice in the light of this further finding of fault.”
A council spokesman said: “We accept the ruling and have apologised to the family for the distress caused by not meeting nationally agreed time-scales.”
“We are working hard to make improvements so that we meet the time-scales we have agreed, more of the time.”
“We are keen to learn from each complaint the ombudsman considers and apologise for the anxiety this child and family suffered.”
“The recent Ofsted re-visit letter recognises the improvement Somerset has made regarding the timeliness and quality of EHCPs since 2020, but we recognise that there is still more to do. We are determined to improve services for children with SEND [special educational needs and disabilities].”
