Case Ref: 25 003 128 Category: Education Sub Category: Special educational needs

• The Council will write to this office, setting out how it will ensure in future that, when a parent or school notifies the Council of a pupil’s non-attendance, the relevant department is informed and can coordinate follow-up action to ensure children missing from education are identified and their needs are met.
• The Council will consider a formal communication process between its SEND and education welfare teams.
• The Council will review its policies and procedures to ensure it retains sufficient oversight of children missing from education.

Case Ref: 24 023 221 Category: Adult care services Sub Category: Charging

• • Remind relevant staff of the importance of providing as much information as possible about charging for adult social care and the costs of the package of care at the time they arrange the care. And to ensure they make a full record of the advice and information given.

Case Ref: 24 022 753 Category: Adult care services Sub Category: Charging

• Provide evidence of the steps taken by the Council to ensure it keeps families informed about changes in care home charges
• Provide evidence of the steps taken by the Council to ensure it checks with care home managers about their expected rates
• Remind staff to keep proper and appropriate records regarding the negotiation and agreement of care charges

Case Ref: 24 022 393 Category: Transport and highways Sub Category: Parking and other penalties

• The Council will remind staff of the importance of logging reasoning in the ‘attributes section’ of its system. When making a decision regarding a dropped kerb application, the Council's advisors need to fill out an 'attributes section' of its system, which allows the advisor to provide a more detailed reasoning of its decision. The system then issues this to the applicant. Therefore if the advisor does not complete this section, the applicant is not provided a detailed response into the Council's decision which can lead to confusion on how the Council has reached its decision.

Case Ref: 24 021 733 Category: Education Sub Category: Special educational needs

• In writing, remind staff of the importance of keeping Section 19 decisions under review where further information is required.

Case Ref: 24 021 378 Category: Education Sub Category: Special educational needs

• The Council will review its commissioning arrangements for Speech and Language Therapists to ensure it has sufficient therapists to deliver Speech and Language therapy provision outlined in Education Health and Care Plans. If this is already part of the Council’s Special Education Needs and Disability improvement plan it should provide us with an update on its progress.

Case Ref: 24 020 580 Category: Education Sub Category: Special educational needs

• The Council will review its Personal budget process to make it compliant with its policy.The Council will ensure that when refusing a Personal budget request for a child with an EHC Plan it sends its response in writing giving the reasons and advising of the right to ask for a review.
• The Council will remind all the SEND front-line staff of the Council’s duties in relation to Personal budgets for children with EHC Plan. For this purpose the Council might use our Focus report “Parent Power: personal budgets in EHC plans”.

Case Ref: 24 019 303 Category: Education Sub Category: School transport

• Review its home to school transport policy to ensure it reflects the statutory guidance in relation to sufficiency of travel allowances.

Case Ref: 24 018 461 Category: Education Sub Category: Special educational needs

• The Council will issue a staff briefing to all front line staff who may come into contact with schools or parents to make them aware of the Council’s Section 19 responsibilities and understand they must make the relevant Council teams aware if a child of compulsory school age is not attending school full-time.
• The Council will review templates used by its SEND information, advice and support services to ensure they are accurate and introduce a regular process of checking the accuracy of information provided by this service.

Case Ref: 24 018 068 Category: Adult care services Sub Category: Domiciliary care

• The Council agreed that it would seek assurance from the Care Provider at the centre of this complaint, that it had a complaint procedure in place consistent with its contract expectations. That it would look to ensure the Care Provider signposted those dissatisfied with its service to that procedure.
• The Council agreed to remind its social work staff to signpost users of services dissatisfied with a commissioned care provider to complaint procedures if they cannot resolve an issue to their satisfaction. They should not suggest the user looks to use a different care provider as an alternative to pursuing a complaint.
• The Council agreed to remind social work staff undertaking adult safeguarding enquiries that their investigations must properly explore and reflect the concerns giving rise to those enquiries. They should also reach evidence based conclusions. This was after this investigation highlighted a series of flaws with the Council's investigation of a care provider, where it failed to make robust enquiries, nor properly examine information it held showing irregularities in medication administration and record keeping.