Reports detailing Derbyshire council’s “failings” of children with special educational needs include a family of a child out of school for two years being owed £12,000

Complaint decisions from council watchdog the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman continue to detail the shortcomings of Derbyshire County Council regarding support for children with special educational needs.

There are now eight further cases which have been published by the ombudsman, with each seeing the council told to compensate the “failed” families for “distress” and “injustice” it has caused along with significant lengths of time of missed education – including being out of school altogether without support.

One case saw the council fail to find a school place for a child for two years – from May 2022 to April 2024, leading to the authority paying the family £12,250 in compensation.

During much of this period, the child in question received just two and a half hours of home tutoring, one day per week, which remained the position at the time of the watchdog’s investigation.

The council has agreed that the child needs a placement in a special school but says its consultations of prospective schools have not been successful.

A report from the watchdog says the child’s parent submitted a request for an education, health and care plan needs assessment in July 2021 and that this was rejected as unnecessary. 

A year later the child was referred via the council’s own early help service and a draft EHC Plan was eventually issued in February 2023 – a year and a half after the initial approach.

The final EHC Plan was issued in May but without a named school, instead detailing “a special school setting to be identified between parents and the Local Authority”, which had yet to be secured more than a year later.

A further complaint report details the council owing a family £3,227.50 for failing to provide educational support to a child for five months from September 2023 to January 2024, for not reviewing an EHC Plan within 12 months (18 months) and twice failing to issue an EHC Plan within 12 weeks after annual reviews.

The council also delayed arranging payment for taxis to take the child to an organisation providing them with educational support, along with further missed payments to the organisation itself, meaning the child could not attend for several weeks.

• It owes £4,587 to a further failed family for lack of educational support  for three months between January 2024 and March 2024, for failing to issue a needs assessment on time and for failing to issue an EHC Plan on time – delaying the family’s rights to appeal.
• It owes £4,850 to a failed family for their child missing three school terms – a year – from November 2022 to November 2023
• It owes £1,000 for failing to amend a child’s EHC Plan for nearly a year after the annual review took place – and the time for a further review
• It owes £6,750 in compensation and a refund of £4,800 for failing to provide education to a child between June 2023 and March 2024. With the mum resorting to funding online courses herself and the child starting her GCSE studies at home
• It owes £7,200 to a family for a child missing out on education for more than a year between April 2022 and June 2023, with the ombudsman calling the council’s total lack of intervention “concerning”
• It owes £1,650 following a lack of educational support from April to July 2023 and September to November 2023

In one of these complaints the watchdog has made extra orders due to there being numerous repeated issues highlighted within the council’s support of children with special educational needs.

It writes: “We have issued a number of decisions over the last two years recommending improvements to the council’s SEN and alternative provision procedures. Because of this I have included a recommendation in this decision that a senior member of the council’s education team review the further service improvements proposed below and discuss the outcome with the council’s relevant oversight committee.”

The council has consistently said that the majority of complaints it faces related to a known period of insufficient service which “was not good enough” between 2022 and 2023.

However, cases are now implicating a failure to provide support during 2024.

All of this follows a critical report from Ofsted and the CQC, published in November, found “significant concerns” about the authority’s special educational needs services, including “widespread and/or systemic failings”.

A county council spokesperson said: “We are always sorry when cases get as far as going to the Local Government Ombudsman. 

“We’ve recently invested £1 million to fund a complete SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) service redesign including a new team set-up, additional staff, specialist training and new software to improve how we manage each child’s case and communicate with their parents. 

“We hope this will soon start to reduce complaints and create positive improvements in this area.

“Meanwhile, we announced £11 million in July to increase the number of school places for children with special needs by around 300 over the next two years, having already worked with special schools to create 200 more places since 2020. 

“In addition, we are also working hard to expand inclusive places in mainstream settings and will be making further announcements in the New Year.

“While we are making progress, we also acknowledge there are areas where we could do better, such as cases like these where the ombudsman found us at fault, and have apologised to the families affected.