Summary: Mr and Mrs X complained the Council delayed in providing their child, D, with a suitable education when she was not able to attend school for medical reasons.  This caused the family significant distress and D missed out on education for 14 months.

Finding

The Ombudsman upheld the complaint and found fault causing injustice.

Recommendations

We welcome the work the Council has already carried out, and has planned, to address the fault identified in this and our previous investigation. This is satisfactory to address the service failures identified.

In addition, the Council has agreed to:

• keep D’s educational provision under review to ensure the number of hours tuition she is currently receiving is a suitable level of support.
• pay D £2,400 for the significant loss of education at an important time in her school life because it failed to provide her with a suitable education. The payment should be paid into an account in D’s name but under parental control and used as Mr and Mrs X feel best for D’s educational or social benefit;
• apologise to Mr and Mrs X for its failure to inform them of their appeal rights when they made an in-year admissions application in March 2017;
• pay Mr and Mrs X £500 to remedy the prolonged and unnecessary distress and anxiety the Council caused them; and
• provide us with evidence of its proposals for working with the family to ensure D receives appropriate educational provision from September 2019 when she begins her A level options.

Given the failings we found in this report may have affected other children in its area, within four months, the Council has agreed to:

• carry out an audit of children missing from education from September 2016 to December 2018 for whom it has a statutory duty to provide suitable full-time education under section 19 Education Act 1996 to identify:
  • the number of children brought to its attention by schools/academies as missing education;
  • the outcome for each child in terms of provision of education. This should include the amount of time each child was out of school and the level of alternative education they received;
  • whether any child was refused a referral to School H because they were not on roll at another school;
  • the number of occasions the Council did not name a school after a FAP Panel failed to place a child.
• submit the findings of the audit to the relevant Children’s or Education Scrutiny Committee together with advice about whether the Council is complying with its statutory duties and has made the service changes found in our previous investigation; and
• provide evidence to us the audit has been completed.

Ombudsman satisfied with Council's response: 19 February 2020.

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