The Ombudsman has published the outcome of their investigation into a case where a family complained that the Council did not provide alternative education for their son (B) who was unable to attend school for medical reasons since November 2018..
The investigation by the Ombudsman has concluded there was fault by the Council and has made a number of recommendations.
The Council has accepted all the Ombudsman’s recommendations and is making an apology to the family for the undue distress and damage caused by not acting quickly enough to put in place alternative education due their child’s health needs.
Since this case, the Council has made significant improvements in our service. Whilst this does not excuse the poor service B and his family received from us, we are making changes to ensure we deliver a better service.
For example:
Every school/academy will have a named School Attendance officer allocated to them from September 2021.
We have employed dedicated staff responsible for supporting and monitoring children who require alternative education.
We have made good progress to improve our Medical Needs Education systems and processes. We are also making good progress to improve the quality and personalisation of our Education, Health Care plans, which was positively recognised by a recent independent Peer Review.
New policies and procedures are being finalised with support from the National Association of Hospital Education to ensure a good education for children who cannot attend school because of health needs is in place.
We have restructured our education and SEND services into a locality model which enables us to adopt a ‘one team round the child’ approach to ensure services are synergised and the risk of delay in accessing services is reduced. This includes officers from Safeguarding, SEND, School Attendance, the Medical Needs Service and School Improvement, operating under one team manager.
An additional safety net has been implemented, as two Heads of Locality and the Chief SEND Officer also have management oversight of children missing in education.
We are currently reviewing all known outstanding cases to ensure that the faults identified in this case have not occurred in others. To date, we have reviewed 19 cases from the current academic year and no further action was necessary. The council is writing to every school to ask them to identify any pupil who might be out of school where it has responsibility for alternative education from the period of the complaint to the present time.
The Council and health partners are working together to improve the timeliness and quality of Education Health and Care Plans, as part of Central Bedfordshire’s SEND improvement journey, with progress being closely monitored by the SEND Partnership Board, the Department for Education and NHS Improvement Team.
The Council is progressing all the recommendations set out by the Ombudsman, including making a formal apology and financial compensation.
We will publish the findings and discuss the report at our next Executive meeting on 12 October 2021.