Council apologises to SEND mum

The county council has been forced to pay £8,600 to a mother after being found at fault for her daughter with special educational needs missing out on years of school.

Worcestershire County Council has been told to apologise and pay the compensation to the mum.

The Local Government Ombudsman has ruled that the council should pay £3,000 to the family to cover childcare costs as well as £4,500 for the nine months the daughter missed out on school.

The council also has to pay £500 for the “avoidable distress, inconvenience and anxiety” caused to the family and reimburse them £600 for the private psychologist report.

A report by the ombudsman said the mother, referred to as ‘Mrs X’, first complained to the council in June 2020 about the council’s delay in meeting her daughter’s needs for more than three years.

She also complained that the council delayed the education, care and health (EHC) plan procedure – which sets out the child’s needs and what arrangements should be made to meet them – and failed to arrange alternative provisions for her daughter while she was out of school.

According to the ombudsman’s report, the daughter was permanently excluded from ‘school Z’ in May 2017 with the council then naming another ‘school W’ in her EHC plan.

Mrs X disagreed with sending her daughter to ‘school W’ and another plan was issued in August 2019 and again named ‘school W’.

After an appeal to the SEND Tribunal, a new EHC plan was issued in 2020 naming ‘school Q’ as the daughter’s new school.

The council arranged home schooling for the daughter between May and July 2018  who was then, in September 2018, placed temporarily at ‘school Y’ which the council said would be suitable.

This placement ended just three months later which Mrs X said caused her daughter “great distress.”

As the daughter’s EHC plan was being put together, the council requested a report from its educational psychologist which Mrs X challenged due to “errors and omissions” and accused the council of failing to gather suitable evidence from speech and language and occupational therapists, which the council admits it was at fault for.