£5,550 payout for mother after Tower Hamlets Council SEND failures
Tower Hamlets Council caused ‘avoidable distress’ to the mother of a SEND child and owed her £5,550 compensation, according to an Ombudsman.
Tower Hamlets Council has been ordered to pay a mother £5,550 for failures relating to her child’s special educational needs.
The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman found the council had failed to arrange suitable education for the child for around two terms. It also said the council was responsible for ‘poor communication’ with the child’s mother.
It said these failures caused the child and their mother ‘avoidable distress’ as well as ‘frustration’ and ‘uncertainty’.
The child, named as ‘Child Y’ in the ombudsman’s report, was supposed to receive online education at home, along with other support, including exercise, specialist maths and science support, and training in touch typing.
This was outlined in Child Y’s education, health and care plan (EHCP) – a legal document that sets out what a council has to provide to meet a child’s special educational needs.
Child Y’s mother – named as ‘Miss X’ – told the council in October 2022 that she was concerned Y was not getting all the support they needed at the online school.
But shortly after this, the council officer she’d been dealing with ‘became unvailable’.
The ombudsman’s report says Miss X ‘chased the council for several months’ and that it did not respond to her until early January 2023. The council then contacted the online school for information but did not receive this for several more months.
In the meantime, Child Y became unable to attend school. Miss X asked the council for a personal budget to pay for their education at a different online school, but received a ‘confused and contradictory’ response from the council.
Eventually, she arranged for Child Y to attend the new school in June 2023 and paid for the fees herself.
A month later, the council agreed that it would pay the new school directly. But Miss X says it did not arrange all the additional support in the EHCP.
Miss X complained to the council in mid-2023. But despite a response from the council, it did not arrange the missing support. She attempted to escalate her complaint to the next stage, but the council treated this as a new complaint instead.
In a new response in March 2024, the council accepted that Y had received less support than they should have and that it had communicated poorly.
However, Miss X says that after this, there were further delays with payments for Y’s education and that the council did not follow through on all the agreed actions.
The ombudsman ordered the council to pay Miss X £2,700 for Y’s missed education and £1,600 for the missed extra support. The payments are intended for Y’s future educational benefit.
It also ordered the council to pay her £250 for the ‘distress and uncertainty’ caused by delays in arranging a new school, another £250 for the time and trouble caused by its mishandling of her complaint and £750 for the ‘distress, frustration and uncertainty’ caused by its failures and poor communication.
The council did not answer questions from the LDRS about what caused the delays and poor communication.
A spokesperson said: ‘We fully accept the report and its findings, and we apologise to Miss X for the uncertainty, upset and delays we caused her and her family.
‘We recognise we did not meet expected standards in this case, and we have put actions in place to address the shortcomings. Our team is working hard to improve and is acting on the report’s recommendations.’
They added: ‘Our very recent Ofsted and CQC Send inspection praised the range and quality of support for children and their families, and we continue to make sure our services are the best they can be.’
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