A parent was left ‘distressed’ trying to get Cambridgeshire County Council to complete assessments to see what support their child needed. The authority has been told to improve its services after the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman upheld the parent’s complaint.
The ombudsman found a number of faults in how the county council handled the case, including ‘going back on its word’ over what assessments would be provided. The county council said it has apologised to the parent and is “fully committed” to addressing the issues raised.
The parent, referred to in the ombudsman report as Mx B, got in contact with the county council back in 2022 to ask the authority to assess their child’s education, health and care needs. A young person with special educational needs can be issued with an Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plan, which sets out the child’s needs and what support they should have.
The authority agreed to assess Mx B’s child, referred to as C in the ombudsman report, starting the process of putting a EHC Plan together. However, Mx B complained about the extent of the advice and information the county council had proposed to gather. They asked for additional assessments to be commissioned, including from occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, and to assess C’s mental health and arrange an assessment to see whether C had autism, or an auditory processing disorder.
Mx B also explained to the county council that they had a disability and asked for the authority to reply in an “accessible format”. Initially the county council defended the extent of information and advice it sought, but in September 2022 it acknowledged that it had failed to secure social care advice and other assessments. It apologised and offered Mx B a symbolic payment of £500.
The county council also said it would get specialist advice and would commission private reports and a sensory occupational therapy assessment. A few months later Mx B complained that they had not heard about arranging the assessments they said had been promised by the county council.
The county council responded by updating on plans to arrange certain assessments. However, it said following further advice received in November 2022, it was no longer recommended for C to have a further sensory occupational therapy assessment. Mx B complained the county council had not carried out the actions it had promised and also complained about how the council had communicated with them, claiming there had been a failure to recognise their needs.
The county council said it had “largely respected” Mx B’s need for reasonable adjustments, but recognised it had made some mistakes. Mx B continued to raise complaints about how the situation was being handled by the authority. The ombudsman considering the complaint said they would not issue a view on whether C needed certain assessments, as they said this was something a SEND Tribunal would resolve.
However, they did find fault in how the county council handled the situation. They said: “I found Mx B would always have had cause to complain about the council’s failure to carry out the specific actions it promised in September 2022. While the council did offer a reasonably comprehensive reply to the complaint, it did not say who would commission the assessments it promised, nor by when.
“Part of good administrative practice in responding to complaints is that the council has a procedure in place to follow up on the commitments given – it did not do that here, and that was a fault. That led to confusion in early 2023 about who would arrange an autism and mental health assessment for C and with which provider.
“There was then a further specific fault when the council changed its position on whether C needed a sensory occupational therapy assessment. While it provided reasons for changing its mind, it should have recognised that it was going back on its word. It therefore needed to approach this matter pro-actively and sensitively. I found it did neither.”
‘Instances of carelessness added to Mx B’s distress’
The ombudsman said there had also been a “lack of effective communication” between the SEN service and the children’s services at the county council. They welcomed steps already taken by the county council to address this issue, but said the faults of the authority in this case caused Mx B “distress”, which they said had not been “fully remedied”.
The ombudsman recognised the county council had agreed to make some reasonable adjustments when communicating with Mx B to meet their needs. However, the ombudsman said these adjustments were not always applied consistently. They said: “I did not consider the injustice caused by individual instances of failing to comply with reasonable adjustments significant – for example, failing to send a single weekly update, or an email later than agreed during the working week. But cumulatively, these instances of carelessness added to Mx B’s distress.”
The ombudsman said the county council should send Mx B a written apology, and make a further symbolic payment of £200, bringing the total payment to £1,800 following the authority’s previous offers. The ombudsman also asked for a single point of contact for Mx B to be confirmed, and set out a list of service improvements it said the county council had agreed to implement within three months.
Responding to the ombudsman’s decision and report, a county council spokesperson said: “We accept the ombudsman’s findings and we have apologised to the complainant. We are fully committed to addressing the issues raised and we’re on track to implement the actions recommended by the ombudsman.
“We maintain more than 8,000 EHC Plans and we’re focused on delivering high-quality services that meet the needs of the children, young people and families in our county. Incidents such as this one are rare and the improvements we’re making will help prevent anything similar happening again.”