Council pays £10,000 over failure to support child in need
Neil Puffett
Monday, March 9, 2020
A council has agreed to pay £10,000 to a family after procedural errors resulted in a child in need not receiving the support they required.
A report by the Local Government Ombudsman reveals that a formal child in need plan drawn up by Sutton Council in June 2017 concluded that the family of a boy, known as Y, with a long-term health condition, who is now 17, should have received access to support from the end of July 2017.
As part of the plan, he was to be registered with the council's children with disabilities team through the "iCount" application process so he could have short breaks away from home.
However, this did not happen because of procedural failures that meant he was not properly registered, ombudsman Michael King's report states.
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King said the boy's mother attempted, on more than one occasion, to access support through the council's application process, but on each occasion was rejected because she had "not completed the required forms properly or provided sufficient information".
A previous ruling by the ombudsman found the council to be at fault in the way it handled her application to register for support and the social care element of Y’s EHC assessment.
The latest ruling looked at how the council could remedy the lack of service received by the family.
"The council agreed that if it had managed the application process better, the family would have been able to access support sooner," the ombudsman's report states.
"It has offered to pay [the mother] £10,000 to reflect the loss of services she could have had since August 2017."
The ombudsman's findings come as MPs are set to examine disparities for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
Members of the public accounts select committee will explore explore why almost twice as many boys as girls are assessed for SEND – 20.2 per cent of boys aged between five and 17 in state-funded schools as of January 2019, compared with 10.7 per cent of girls – as well as disparities between ethnic groups and regions.
The meeting can be watched live from 4pm.
