Poorly Served SEND Student Receives £4,500 from SCC

Published on: 23 Aug, 2024
Updated on: 24 Aug, 2024

By Chris Caulfield

local democracy reporter

A special needs student was compensated £4,500 by Surrey County Council after he received just an hour of education a week for two entire terms.

As well as the payout, the council must provide an action plan setting out how it will avoid similar failures and deliver special educational needs support to children who cannot go to school.

The youngster had been expelled from his school in November 2022 but it took until September 2023 for the council to find him a full-time replacement.

He should have also been receiving personalised speech and language therapy programmes, devised by a therapist and delivered by his school.

The social care and education watchdog said this was “nowhere near the full-time education the council should have delivered” – after awarding the payout to the family.

When the council failed to find a new school it referred him to their short-term home education service, as an interim measure.

This service began in January 2023, but only for an hour a week – despite him being capable of having more – and it was not until March when the county council asked its service to up his hours. He never received this as the council “lacked the capacity”, the Ombudsman found.

A complaint was lodged in April, with the council accepting it failed to deliver suitable education for the boy – but added it had been trying, without success, to find him a new school.

In May, the council was able to find the boy an external provider and agreed to continue supporting him over the summer holidays.

However by the end of July, before any education had been delivered, the provider told Surrey County Council that it could no longer help.

In September 2023, when the council placed him in a new school, his learning started up again.

Cllr Tim Oliver

Leader of Surrey County Council, Tim Oliver (Con, Weybridge) said they accepted the findings and sincerely apologised for any distress caused.

He said: “I am aware that the council has not always got things right for all families and that the support and service that some children with additional needs and disabilities and their families receive is not always of the standard that we would expect, and I am sorry about that.

“We are working hard to improve services, and our most recent Local Area SEND Inspection noted progress is underway.

“We know how important access to full-time education is for all children to support their development and wellbeing, including when this must be provided outside of school, and we have been reviewing our arrangements for providing and following up alternative provision in situations where young people are unable to attend school as well as continuing to successfully deliver a multi-million pound capital programme to increase the availability of, and access to high quality specialist school provision across the county.

“We are resolute in our ambition to continue to improve services and outcomes for children and young people with additional needs and disabilities so that they are happy, healthy, safe and confident about their future.”

Overall, the both the number of complaints to the ombudsman, and the financial remedies paid out are lower compared with the same stage last year, reflecting, the council said, improvements in services, plus more timely and proportionate responses in our internal complaints procedure.