Summary: Mrs C complains the Council’s Special Educational Needs and Disability team failed to contact her regularly and consistently about her child’s case and did not keep to the statutory timeline for Education Health and Care assessments of needs. We will not investigate her complaint at this time. The Ombudsman cannot assess the extent of any fault or recommend a remedy until the provision the child should have been receiving is known. A tribunal is currently deciding this. Mrs C can complain to the Ombudsman again when the outcome of the tribunal is known.

The complaint

1. Mrs C complains the Council’s Special Educational Needs and Disability team:
• failed to contact her regularly and consistently about her child’s case.
• did not keep to the statutory timeline for Education Health and Care assessments of needs.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We cannot investigate a complaint if someone has appealed to a tribunal. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(a), as amended)
3. SEND is a tribunal that considers special educational needs. (The Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal (‘SEND’))
4. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word ‘fault’ to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we believe the injustice is not significant enough to justify our involvement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered the information provided by Mrs C. She had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered her comments before making a final decision.

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What I found

Background

6. Mrs C removed her child, who I shall refer to as X, from school in January 2018 due to X’s Special Educational Needs (SEN).
7. She said the school was not meeting X’s needs and in September 2019 she asked the Council to carry out an assessment of X’s needs and to write an Education Health and Care Plan (EHC Plan).
8. Mrs C asked the Council to contact the GP who diagnosed X with autism. She also asked the Council to contact X’s Educational Psychologist to provide more specific targets for X’s EHC plan.
9. 14 weeks after asking for the EHC assessment from the Special Educational Needs and Disability team at the Council, Mrs C had not received any response.
10. In February 2020 the Council replied to Mrs C’s complaint and apologised for the delay in finishing X’s EHC Plan. It explained the SEND Team was understaffed, and this resulted in delays. The Council said that it was fully committed to improving the services it provided to parents and carers. The Council also confirmed who X’s case worker was and accepted the communications with the SEND Team were not satisfactory.
11. In July 2020 Mrs C escalated her complaint because she was not satisfied with the Council’s response. The Council issued the final EHC Plan for X at the end of July 2020.
12. Mrs C is not happy with the content of EHC Plan and she submitted an appeal to the First-tier Tribunal for Special Educational Needs and Disability.

Assessment

13. The law says that we cannot investigate a complaint if someone has already appealed to a tribunal. Mrs C has begun the process of appealing to the tribunal about the content of the EHC Plan. We cannot investigate matters that are being considered by the Tribunal nor the Tribunal process.
14. There are elements of Mrs C’s complaint we may be able to investigate. However, we should not do so now, as until the Tribunal has made a decision, we would be unable to properly assess the impact the Council’s actions have had upon X and Mrs C.
15. After the tribunal, Mrs C can come back to us and we will then be better placed to fairly assess the personal injustice to Mrs C and X.

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Final decision

16. The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint at the moment. This is because the Ombudsman cannot assess the impact of any fault or recommend a remedy until the case has been decided by the Tribunal. Once this has been done Mrs C may complain to the Ombudsman again.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman