Are SEN case workers to be trusted?

And we should all be happy to let our child be screwed over, be illegally refused an education, affecting their entire future, because we are only after horse riding lessons and all the extra curriculars to make up a private education apparently!

Yep. And yet further up the thread, I got a “well you sound lovely” for pointing out that parents have way more skin in the game.

We are supposed to be gracious and suck up any offers of help, however much they fall short.

I completely agree! I’ll never forget how pissed off I felt at an annual review where my daughter’s teacher was saying that if she wasn’t able to come to school then it should be recorded as an unauthorised absence. One of the people on ‘my side’ piped up in support of me and said that would get me in trouble with the council and it wasn’t fair and also that it was in breach of the disability discrimination act. The stupid teacher started crying. At that moment I lost all respect for her. I wondered how she could dare to play the victim when I have to worry about my extremely complex daughter for the rest of my life. And when I’m gone, what then?

Would she remember my daughter in 10 or even 5 years? No.

That's heartbreaking x

"My child is mid teens now and when we were looking at specialist 10 years ago the independent specialists were only for the most severe complex children be that behavioural, medical etc. now I’m seeing that the same schools don’t want these children anymore they are only taking children with less severe needs that at one time would have been managed in mainstream with support"

Yep my son had to leave his independent specialist where he has been for years because they now don't take young people with his complex needs.

No, they primarily needed a calm low arousal environment. But a) without it they had been very dangerously broken, b) there were schools offering the same, but with nicer grounds at up to £80k and the LA were paying that. This was pre pandemic though. All professionals agreed it was needed, we didnt pay for any independent reports or legal representation. I am sure that it would be a different story now

That is a fairly low rate for a special school though. I presume your child didn't have complex physical or medical needs? Places at our LA PMLD special school are between 40k and 60k dependent on need, so when an independent quotes lower they look better, despite not actually providing an equivalent service. The system is in crisis and children are loosing out, both those with SEN and those without.

Off the back of this I looked up job ads for "EHCP writers". Not caseworkers but subcontractors.

Blimey. They need to commit to writing two EHCPs PER DAY. No wonder they are cut and paste jobs from EP report if you're lucky and bugger all else. Who can write an EHCP in half a day? I've spent longer than that reasonably requesting that a SaLT assessment be included in an EHCNA, over and over. And someone has probably spent another half a day reading them all, then ignoring or occasionally writing "no" in creative ways.

I think that’s my first thought about sen caseworkers on the whole.

They are either ineffectual or (by following what they reckon is a moral rather than legal perspective) make life much worse.

Yes. And additionally the case workers do this for a job. They could do something else. Flip burgers. Drive Ubers. Whatever. But they do this through choice. As parents this is our LIFE. We can’t resign. We can’t brush up our CV and move on. This is it, and it’s often really REALLY hard, made harder by some of the appalling attitudes displayed on this thread.

I agree that most case officers have an awful job and are probably trying their best. However, you cannot seriously claim that all of them are. Far too many parents have experience of case officers who ignore them, who do not do what they say they will do, and take local authority policy as gospel without checking what the legal requirements actually are. And yes, some can and do lie and bully parents. I accept that a degree of the misinformation that is churned out is down to poor training by LAs, but the Code of Practice and the relevant statutes and regulations all relatively easily available.

It is very clear that some are being told to delay, defend indefensible appeals,and follow unlawful blanket policies, and they are meekly following instructions rather than consulting their consciences. That is particularly the case with the more senior ones. There are times when they have a choice between throwing a vulnerable child under the bus and doing the right thing, and even the caseworkers on this thread have admitted that a proportion of their colleagues will make the wrong choice for the sake of a quiet life.

This is 100% my experience too.

My child is mid teens now and when we were looking at specialist 10 years ago the independent specialists were only for the most severe complex children be that behavioural, medical etc. now I’m seeing that the same schools don’t want these children anymore they are only taking children with less severe needs that at one time would have been managed in mainstream with support

Absolutely. The private sector steps in to exploit a gap and people make enormous sums of money off the most basic shit. One provider quoted £120 per hour for nature walks with an unqualified 'mentor'. They couldn't accept my child in the end anyway because his learning difficulties were too severe.

None of this would have happened if his first (several) specialist schools had met his needs in the first place.

If all the money going on profit in private provisions and all the money going to pay solicitors, judges etc had all been invested in basic sen provision in the first place we wouldn’t be where we see now. Instead things have been cut and cut at the early intervention level to save money but the overall cost of sen is just going up and up

Yeah, I really resent my child being used as a cash cow by AP providers, often with pretty crap provision in return.

@DisabledCaseworker it's not about who should be funding education (LA) but when people say don't trust Caseworkers because they are LA paid it is more about he who pays the piper calls the tune.

When I was given a personal budget for my child's education, the difference was astonishing - suddenly I was able to make quick decisions in the best interests of my child and had the ability to sack poor quality providers. When I gave up the PB (for various reasons), we were no longer the clients and my child's tuition agency actually forbade me from talking to them as they only talked to the commissioners (LA) even when I had significant and verifiable safeguarding concerns about the tutor.

I agree that the rates that independent specialist schools charge are shocking. One of my kids was also in an LA specialist school at £20k (+taxi) and did pretty well. One very expensive independent that our LA sends lots of kids to is notorious for excluding kids when they get difficult.

How can generic comments on caseworkers amount to a personal attack on one? Even@DisabledCaseworker accepts that there are some who are guilty of poor practice.

it wouldn’t be any different if the caseworkers were private though and had to work within an overall budget ie. Didn’t have a bottomless pit of money they could use to fund things. In fact it would probably be worse as you then have profits being creamed off the top as well so would leave less for the actual provision if you still have same budget. It’s like the many indepdent specialists schools now that are charging £80k to £100k per year, my son is in an la autism school and it is funded at £20k per child per year. Most of the independent specialist schools aren’t providing anything more they just charge more due to having to make a profit as well.

This is one case. The vast majority of experts recommend provision which does not profit them in any way because they won't be providing it. Most therapies are sufficiently generic that, if they are in an EHCP, the LA can contract them through the NHS or providers already known to them.

Where exactly do you claim I suggested you break GDPR? On the contrary, I suggested that if you want to give examples you could cite cases that are actually known and published already.

Honestly, all this emotional stuff about something which no-one has suggested makes me wonder whether you are in the right job anyway.

The OP asked a question and I answered that question, honestly, and based on 20 years of experience of dealing with LA SEN caseworkers.

My experience has taught me that caseworkers and LA's act unlawfully, and do so consistently. The law in this area is strong, and gives rights and protections to SEN children. By acting unlawfully, whether due to ignorance of the law, in defense of the public purse, or whatever other reason, the result is that they do not act in the best interests of children with SEN.

No caseworker has to spend ridiculous amounts of time over any proposed provision. It's a simple issue of assessing the evidence for it and for any alternatives - plus they mostly pass the actual decision-making up the line to a panel.

I can see where you are coming from but I think the issue is caused by the basics not even being provided, even in cases of very obvious needs never mind needs that are less obvious. So if a parent has to go to tribunal to get even the basics and potentially have private reports commissioned as evidence then they are going to ask for bells and whistles, if they never had to go to tribunal in the first place, either becuase their needs were met in school in a graduated response or they were already assessed for an ehcp and the basics provided though that they wouldn’t have the need to go to tribunal in the first place.

as a parent my experience of graduated response is that it was just used as an excuse by the la not to assess as saying the school hadn’t done xyz yet which the school then refused to do as they don’t have funding. My son was diagnosed autistic at 6 and had major issues in mainstream school and was regularly being excluded, we couldn’t even get an ed psych though the school due to the cost to them and they wouldn’t involved the specialist autism team from the la as the la charged the school for this and the school said they couldn’t tell them anything they didn’t already know. I had to go to tribunal for refusal to assess, got ehcp with 32.5 hours of funding but that is only worth £8k a year to the school and funding hasn’t been increased in our la for about 15 years so there is no incentive for a school to make it work or provide completely what is in ehcp, eventually things get so bad that a child will leave which is a financial win for the school.