SCN0346

Written evidence from Parental Submission 96

 

 

Local Authority:               [local authority]

 

 

Assessment of and support for Children and Young people with SEND

 

What was affected:

 

  1. Physiotherapy

 

  1. Statement entitled our daughter to ‘at least half-termly’ visits from Physiotherapists. When we and school Teaching Assistants noticed our daughter’s legs tightening and physical abilities reducing, school contacted the Physiotherapist for input and got no response for over 6 weeks.

 

  1. We discovered that the phyiostherapist was the sole physio working over a massive geographical area.

 

  1. We paid for a private physiotherapist who confirmed our daughter’s hamstrings had tightened dramatically and could require corrective surgery if it was not dealt with promptly, and recommended daily exercise needing gaiters.

 

  1. We emailed the physiotherapist to ask for gaiters and had no response.

 

  1. We phoned the boss of the physiotherapy service who acknowledged that they had been asking for more physiotherapists to be employed for over a year but were never granted any additional funding to employ more.

 

  1. I wrote to the NHS CCG to ask if they had plans to recruit more therapists in order that our daughters needs, as detailed in her EHCP and before that, her statement could be met. I also made an a FOI request to them in the same letter, asking about the number of physiotherapists employed for disabled children in [district], the caseload, geographical spread and plans to employ more physiotherapists and received an answer that they were unable to provide the information

 

  1. There are not enough physiotherapists employed, due to lack of funds, to give the level of provision my daughter is legally entitled to in her EHCP.

 

Support for Alternative and Augmentive Communication and Physical Impairment and Medical Support Team

 

  1. Having heard rumours about cuts to local Physical Impairment and Medical Support team in December 2017, I contacted local parent carer forum Dec 2017.  They said they knew nothing of it. They contacted Support Services for Education (LA) who said there was an internal consultation because likely budget cuts and changes to funding meant there would need to be changes to services, but no redundancies underway. I then contacted PIMS staff who were told by [local authority] they were not allowed to tell the parents anything about the consultation.  The Parent carer forum advised me against posting things publicly on their site as it would unduly distress parents and there was no need as there were no redundancies. I wrote to Support Services for Education to voice my concerns and ask if parents could work with them to make sure vital services weren’t cut and to support calls for more funding.

 

  1. In March 2018, a visiting therapist confirmed that she was being made redundant along with several other staff in PIMS team. Parents knew nothing, had not been consulted. We gathered a team to go to Scrutiny at County Hall to challenge the cuts. The Support Services Team were presenting to the councillors. Their presentation explained about their fantastic streamlining of services which would save 210K but made no mention of redundancies. We had alerted Councillors who quizzed them and they had to confess that there would be cuts and that there had been no consultation. The proposed cuts meant the one specialist communication support advisor for AAC users like our daughter would be made redundant and there was no plan for how their needs would be met.

 

  1. In the face of massive parental protest at the meeting, in the media and social media the Scrutiny Committee recommended that they pause all plans and return with a full report the following month. Again a group of parents campaigned, demanding to know what is being cut, what will replace provision. We were told they needed to save 85K and were reducing PIMS from around 11 staff members to 2.3 but that the children would not be impacted. Their plan was to devolve money to schools and let them buy in the support, however they had no research to evidence that this would be possible or that the schools were happy with this arrangement. Again, the Councillors recommended that no redundancies be progressed and no budget cuts be made before further consultation had been undertaken. This is now on hold until September. However, during the consultation, staff were told there might be a job pool and some were advised by HR that they would be better off taking voluntary redundancy. Some staff had therefore requested voluntary redundancy and it is still unclear whether these cuts are reversible or not. If not, [local authority] will have effectively cut the service by rushing through these changes and keeping them quite.  The Head of Children’s Services apologised for the mishandling of this to parents and the Councillors described it as shameful and harrowing.

 

  1. There is still no clarity over what will happen and a danger that support for youngsters with physical difficulties and medical conditions will be slashed. While services for youngsters with deafness, visual impairment and autism have some statutory guidance about the form of support which must be given, PIMS provision does not have statutory guidance and can therefore be cut without the LA breaking the law.

 

School Placement

 

  1. Our daughter was due to transfer to our local mainstream upper school (year 10) A robust transition plan had been in place for 2 years. The statement and EHCP detailed that TAs should be employed at the new school for the last half term as well as at existing school, to enable the high level of training and differentiation needed. The professionals to provide the training were booking in training dates, three transition meetings were held.

 

  1. The upper school failed to advertise for TA’s in time despite being provided with the information and support from her current school and the LA, despite us chasing and offering help. I explained that if they didn’t manage to employ and train staff in time that our daughter would not be able to start in September and they still failed to place an advert. They left it so late that there was not time for the long-standing plan to be enacted.  The staff they chose to interview had no school or educational  experience, just caring experience and they interviewed them 4 weeks before the end of the school year. This effectively meant that our daughter could not go to that school and we had to find a last minute placement. At that stage, the only kind of school who could reasonably be expected to meet our daughter’s needs with barely any time to prepare was a special school. Our child was effectively forced out of mainstream.  The LA staff told me that they could not make the school advertise and could not really advise me what to do. That meant that it was down to us as parents to try to liaise with the school and understand what was going on and try to help put things right. This was happening alongside us having to effectively write our daughters’ EHCP. (see below)

 

The roles of and co-operation between education, health and social care sectors Wheelchair Services

 

  1. Although our EHCP details that our daughter uses a powered chair and it is detailed under provision, when we contacted wheelchair services to say that she had outgrown her chair, they (organisation) said that she was not entitled because she had been provided with a non-basic model manual chair. Her OT intervened to support us to explain that because of her postural support needs, our daughter couldn’t use a basic manual chair and the manual back up they would have to provide would always need to be a more specialised system. They refused to provide one saying she was not entitled to it.

 

  1. We were told that if the chair was for Educational purposes, the education budget could pay, but as she wanted the chair at home and in the community, they wouldn’t fund it. That if it was for a posturally supportive seat, Occuptaitonal Therapy money could contribute to it, but because it was not just for the chair but for the mobility aspect, they wouldn’t pay. I asked whether they would consider joint funding between Wheelchair Services,  Health and Education but was just told that ‘bosses’ wouldn’t agree to this until the other service had agreed to it.

 

  1. I had to write to the bosses drawing attention to the EHCP mentioning powered mobility, get a parent carer forum to represent our case to the CCG and get my daughter’s OT and school to contact wheelchair services.

 

  1. I was then told that powered mobility was in the ‘wrong section’ because it was in education provision not health. So Wheelchair services didn’t have to provide it because it wasn’t detailed under health provision. Eventually they agreed, after us fighting for over a year, and started the assessment process.  There was no collaborative working and the whole onus was on us as parents to try to navigate this and try to find a solution.

 

The transition from statements of special educational needs and Learning Disability Assessments to Education, Health and Care Plans

 

  1. At our daughter’s Annual Review we asked whether there was anybody to manage our daughter’s transition. We knew the named caseworker was off on long term sick. There was a replacement but we could never contact them. The LA confirmed that there was not anybody in post to do the work but that they were working hard to get somebody in post. The caseworkers are so over worked that they are constantly off with stress and illness and there are not enough of them to do a proper job. Our first draft was just the copy of the statement cut and pasted into an EHCP template. As nobody from the Local Authority had come to the previous Annual Review, none of the discussed changes had been made, and the statement  they had copied and pasted was two years out of date.

 

  1. The LA did not request reports from Occupational Therapy, Educational Psychology or Social Care Team although our daughter has quadriplegic athetoid cerebral palsy, is non-verbal and school staff were not confident how to support her in her learning and has regular visits from a social worker. When we asked for these reports, they asked if they were really necessary. I had to point out it was an Education Health and Care plan, not just education, state the date they had to legally issue a plan and tell them that a lawyer would be checking the drafts.

 

  1. Integrated Therapy Services (OT) was not able to submit a report in time because the request was so late. When the draft was issue nothing was quantified or specific. It was full of statements like ‘regular opportunities to access physiotherapy.’ None of her equipment was detailed (wheelchair, standing frame, toilet seat, gaiters, hoist) and there was no information detailing who was funding anything. Social Care was entirely empty. Health was entirely empty.

 

  1. I rewrote the entire EHCP myself and sent the LA a word document. The issued EHCP is pretty much exactly what I wrote.

 

 

              June 2018