Compensation for Dudley child who missed six months of schooling

Dudley Council has agreed to pay £1,200 to the mother’s child after the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman found the authority was at fault.

The independent watchdog has criticised the local authority for delays in preparing an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHC) and for not providing alternative education while the unnamed youngster was out of school.

Revealing his findings, the Ombudsman said the council had failed to provide an agreed assessment of her needs by a 20-week deadline when her mother asked for help in December 2017.

Referring to the child as ‘Y’ and her parents as ‘X’, the independent watchdog said: “The council acknowledges there was a delay in issuing the final EHC plan. The council should have assessed Y’s needs and issued an EHC Plan by 6 May 2019, but it did not issue a final plan until 4 June 2019.

“This was four weeks outside the 20-week time frame.

“The council states that this delay was due to Mr and Mrs X wanting to make amendments. But the council’s chronology suggests it had not received all the information it needed from other professionals to complete the assessment by the deadline.”

He added that while she was at home should have provided alternative schooling, saying: “The council was aware Y could not attend school due to severe anxiety in January 2019 and therefore had a duty to provide alternative educational provision.

“But there is no evidence the council considered or made any attempts to secure alternative educational provision for her for the remainder of the academic year.”

In ordering Dudley to pay £1,200 compensation to Y’s parents to spend on her lost schooling, he noted education bosses had agreed to provide reminders and training to ensure staff understand the council’s duty to offer alternative educational provision.

Responding to the Ombudman’s findings, Councillor Ruth Buttery, cabinet member for children’s services at Dudley Council, said: “We take the findings of this report very seriously and acknowledge there were delays in our handling of this case.

“Providing a valuable and suitable education to all children is essential and we remain committed to improving the way we work to prevent future delays in any child’s learning.

“We have already put measures in place based on the recommendations of the Ombudsman. This includes ensuring we obtain the right evidence at the right time to assess a child’s needs and to ensure there is always a continuity of education.

“We continue to learn from this process and have offered our sincere apologies to the family concerned, I can assure them we are working really hard to prevent this happening again.”