Bury Council has been ordered to pay more than £13,000 to the mother of an autistic child who missed out on a school place for a number of years.
A local government ombudsman found that Bury Council had caused ‘injustice’ to the mother (referred to as X) and child (Q), and was at fault in failing to follow the child’s education health and care (EHC) plan since January 2020.
The complaint from the mother was that the local authority had failed to provide education in school for her child for nearly three years.
An ombudsman's report, said: “Q is now 15 years old and is diagnosed with Autistic Spectrum Condition (ASC), significant sensory processing difficulties and struggles with extreme anxiety.
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“Q stopped attending school in the first year of secondary school in November 2018 and found it difficult to leave the house unaccompanied.
“X says that between November 2018 and October 2019 Q attended school on a maximum of four days. Q was issued with an EHC Plan in July 2019.
“It named the school that Q should attend as P School, an independent special needs day school. Q attended P School until the end of the term in July 2019 but did not return in September 2019 and did not attend after that.”
Later, some one to one tuition was commenced with the child. Attempts to find suitable placements at other schools were not successful, the report found.
The ombudsman noted that the child’s most recent final EHC plan is dated July 2019, naming P School as the placement.
The plan had not been amended even though Q had not been attending P School. The council recognised this as the case and said a new school would have been named when one was identified.
It also said that the Covid-19 period caused issues with visiting schools as this could not have happened as X was shielding during this period. It said it began consulting with schools when it could, in October 2020, but these were not successful.
The ombudsman also found that the mother’s request for a personal budget to purchase equipment to meet her child’s sensory and physical activity needs had been wrongly refused, and no sensory input had been made since November 2018.
In its comments to the ombudsman the council acknowledged responses to the mother’s complaints ‘drifted’ as a result of significant staff turnover in the special education team.
It said this meant that the mother did not have a named officer for her child for much of the period in question and this added to the difficulties. The ombudsman ordered Bury Council to pay £13,200 in compensation to the mother for the faults, injustice and distress caused.
A spokesman for Bury Council, said: “Bury Council remains committed to improving SEND services and has apologised to the parents. We have recently completed a restructure to ensure that the team has increased resource.”
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