The Government has ordered Bristol City Council to fix its “fractured relationship” with parents of children with special educational needs (SEND). City Hall bosses are finalising an “accelerated progress plan”, which needs to be submitted to the Department for Education (DfE) by February 1, following a re-inspection by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in October.
The government officials referred the local authority’s education department to Whitehall for “further action” after concluding it had failed to reverse years of mistrust, a situation exacerbated by last year’s SEND spying scandal. Leaked documents revealed city council staff monitored social media posts and photos of SEND parents critical of the service’s poor quality and massive delays to education, health and care plans (EHCPs).
Then it emerged that the authority had blocked DfE funding to Bristol Parent Carer Forum, the charity that had been liaising with it on improving SEND provision but whose members were subject to the surveillance, although the council insisted the two issues were unrelated. Ofsted and the CQC revisited the city three months ago to check progress in five areas of “significant weakness” identified by the original inspection in 2019 and found sufficient improvements had been made in four of them.
