Birmingham City Council issued with direction notice over SEND failures
Fiona Simpson
Thursday, October 21, 2021
The government has issued a direction notice to Birmingham City Council over its failure to improve support services for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
John Coughlan, former director of children’s services at Hampshire County Council, has been appointed as commissioner to oversee improvements at Birmingham City Council, according to the notice.
It states that: “The council is failing to perform to an adequate standard in some or all of the SEND functions.”
-
SEND Special Report: Developments in policy, practice and research
-
Legal Update: Issue SEND Review must solve
The council was urged to improve 13 “significant” areas of weakness in its SEND provision following a local area SEND inspection carried out by Ofsted in June 2018.
A follow-up visit in May this year found that just one of the 13 areas had shown signs of improvement, the direction notice states.
Inspectors found there had been no improvement in areas including “a lack of an overarching approach or joined-up strategy for improving provision and outcomes for children and young people with SEND” and “ineffective” joint working with other agencies.
The council was also criticised over its “weak” engagement with parents and high levels of parental dissatisfaction.
“Parents who feel that they have had a positive experience told us that they consider themselves to be the lucky ones,” the report states.
The council’s local offer for children with SEND is “difficult to locate” and the council has not “ensured it is a useful way of communicating with parents,” inspectors said.
Other failures noted by Ofsted include long waiting times for children who need support, poor academic progress for children with SEND in Birmingham compared to others across the country and the frequent exclusion of children with SEND compared to their peers without additional needs.
The only area in which improvement was made between 2018 and 2021, according to inspectors, was the development of joint commissioning.
The intervention follows the council's decision in August to terminate the contract with its provider of special needs transport over safeguarding concerns.
Birmingham City Council has been contacted for comment.
