Are SEN case workers to be trusted?

Nobody is screaming or shouting at anybody in our LA as there have been no phone lines in or out of the SEND dept since covid or the SEND transport dept either. Funnily enough every other dept managed to keep phonelines open throughout and operate as normal now.
Likewise they removed all named contacts and imposed generic emails dependent on area, they have now removed all those and there is just one working email for the whole dept which hasn't accepted emails for weeks as it is full. The complaints dept is no longer working either but I suppose 700 formal complaints in six months is some workload when other departments average 10 a year.
I'm long in the tooth been unfortunate enough to be dealing with the SEND dept for 28 years so know my way around but my heart breaks for some of the parents on the local support boards who don't have a clue as to how badly they are being treated or how to alter it. SENDIASS here only support parents with their own disabilities and Ofsted themselves said they didn't meet minimum standards so God knows what sort of support they are offering.

'other DC aren't their concern'. This is what people are struggling to understand, for a parent other children aren't their concern, for the LA professionals all children are their concern, not just those with (understandably) vocal parents.

"But surely they still have to comply with the law?"

LAs don't which is why parents are forced into not only Tribunals but also Judicial Reviews. And they still lie at those if they think they will get away with it.

No because they work for the LA and the LAs priority is money. Always be polite but wary of anything they say.

Just on the EP note - there’s a huge shortage, not just of LA EPs but EPs in general (private and locum). And the govt aren’t supporting the training of new EPs very well - to the extent that one major EP training course has had to close down. It won’t be the last.

I have 3 dc with Ehcplans.

Oldest is 20 and he was Statemented at 4. So been in the 'system' 17 years.

I have never met a caseworker who worked in any of my dc interests.

I have been misinformed and lied to on multiple occasions.

I have made about 15 formal complaints over the years and been to tribunal (I won).

Our LA is shocking recent Ofsted inspection was shameful. Local MP discovered they were sitting on £11m ringfenced SEND funding Matt Keer later discovered they were sitting on £28m ringfenced SEND funding and had been since 2019.
I do various FOI recent one showed they paid out more than half a million in recompense for their failings in 6 months, the previous 6 months it was almost £400k, they spent thousands using barristers against unrepresented families and their win rate is less than 1% even worse than national average.
Prior to Ofsted they employed 3 consultants in the SEND dept on £150k plus salaries. They renewed the contracts after they had supposedly met the service level agreements which included being Ofsted ready.They were the sacrificial lambs.
It seems there is money but they don't seem to want to spend it actually supporting children.
Since the inspection they are crowing over plans to spend £3 million on extra SEN places that would be the plans that Ofsted in the inspection said were ill thought out and unlikely to improve matters.
Extra funding wouldn't improve our SEND dept it needs a change of ethos and an overhaul of senior management and competency standards for the admin.

They don't! and as there is no accountability, they get away with ruining lives! Why do you think last year 1.3% of tribunals were won by LAs?

This.

I am deeply worried about quality.

My DD’s is continuously assigned new CWs with no warning. One year we were emailing re her review to somebody no longer her CW even though she was listed as her CW on the computer system. Her new one actually lived and worked the other of the country and was just contracted out. She didn’t even know the schools we were discussing.

This year the new her new CS is somebody we actually know and somebody we had started the complaints procedure about after several professionals raised concerns. She was safeguarding lead at my DD’s old college in a non teaching role with zero SEND experience and a dreadful attitude to SEND and ND. The college’s SEND department was woeful and on the county independent EHCP support schools of concern list. They just get rid of students to help result figures and refuse EHCPs whilst offering little SEND support.She worked hard to get students off rolled, was vile and mocking in meetings and hugely inappropriate in a bullying way in and out of meetings. One professional we dealt with said they’d never come across a member of school staff wanting so much personal information they weren’t entitled to. All were aghast as to how ableist and awful she was in meetings.

Fast forward to now- she’s listed on linked in as a “ data specialist” and is clearly being given EHCP case handling work. 🤔 This raises huge questions re quality for me as in so many ways. I raised my concerns whilst requesting a new case handler which we got. I have asked how we register concerns re quality as regards case handlers 3 times and they consistently avoid answering my question.

Don't trust them. And by them I mean anyone in the SEN department of the LA.

By the time I took my LA to tribunal we'd burnt through 5 caseworkers because I kept complaining every time they acted unlawfully.

At their worst they lied about a positive consultation with a learning support unit, got me to change the type of provision named so I could accept a place and then I got an email the next day saying the consultation had just been sent out. Another time they gave my daughter a place in a mainstream school despite the school saying they categorically couldn't meet section F of her EHCP. They broke the law so many times during tribunal that they got barred halfway through the process.

This is the issue - I understand parents being frustrated and at the end of their tether but the hate just gets too much, people leave, less experienced people pick up the cases, more delays, less continuity.

I would trust them the same way I trust my plumber when my boiler is broken

My friend (ex Senco) was an EHCP caseworker and lasted a year. She said it was an impossible job in a broken system and received so much hate from parents, relating to issues she had no control over. She’s now doing supply teaching and is so much happier.

Yes, councils are lobbying central government to stop parents from bringing SEND appeals to tribunal. Which, by the way, parents wouldn’t need to do at all if Local Authorities actually followed the law and honoured their obligations.

When parents go to tribunal, they will never get the moon on a stick. They will only get what’s fair and what their child is legally entitled to. My solicitor was very clear with me about working within the legal framework. Tribunals do not order things unless the law dictates it.

If anyone is ever looking for a good, sound SEN solicitor who follows the law, I’d recommend Chris Barnett.

Yes. I considered it constantly as a SENCo and as a LA advisory teacher for 22 years. I couldn’t sleep for years due to worrying about it. I took suicidal children to A and E. I made hundreds of CAMHS referrals. I attended meetings in secure mental health hospitals to discuss how admissions could have been prevented. I spent over two decades educating myself about child mental health and advocating for children with SEND.

The verbal abuse of professionals who are working themselves into the ground isn’t limited to MN posts. It also happens by email and in face to face meetings. Blaming professionals for a broken system doesn’t help children - it eventually breaks the professionals and makes us leave.

Just to add: Caseworkers are not the individuals making the decisions. I know that. But they should follow whistleblowing policy to report the ongoing neglect, law breaking, negligence and discrimination or they are complicit.

Yes, but assuming that every caseworker is a living saint is just naive. I have recently been supporting the parent of a child who has had some very traumatic experiences in school and who is now unable to cope with even walking into a school building. The parent has been told the LA won't even begin to consider offering home tuition or alternative provision until they have consulted every possible school in the area, and for some reason they seem incapable of consulting them all together, so it is taking forever.

OK, I get it that the caseworker is probably doing what they have been told by others. However, they have taken it a lot further by trying to bully the parent into going along with this farcical process, by suggesting that the tribunal will take it against the parent if she doesn't enthusiastically promote every suggestion they make. They must know that the threat about the tribunal is completely untrue, as all they will be interested in is what the child needs, full stop, and they won't be interested in petty little digs at the parents. Making a decision to bully a parent and then to use lots of complicated lies to bolster up the decided course of action is not something the caseworker can legitimately blame others for,

I know this is only one example, but it happens to be a recent example of a very regular issue.

Have you considered the mental health of the children that are being failed time and time again? Or the mental health of the family trying desperately to support their child when the LA are making it impossible. Impossible to work, impossible to therefore pay bills, impossible to just get through each day.

Do you know how many parents of SEN children have considered suicide? And predominantly because the LA aren't complying with their legal duty, leaving parents hanging on by a thread.

So in all honesty, a caseworkers feelings getting a bit hurt because a parent on MN called a generic evil is nothing compared to what the children and their families are dealing with.

It is abuse. It's neglect.
If an abled child's parents were choosing to not supply adequate care and education they would be charged with neglect. The individuals that make the decisions to purposefully neglected disabled children should be charged with child abuse.

I'm so sorry you're family is going through this. Our 3 year ehcp crisis was traumatic too. Solidarity and empathy ♥️

I think that some caseworkers can’t live with their consciences and that’s why they leave.

But surely they still have to comply with the law?

I know - unfortunately some senior leaders don’t understand, or choose not to believe, that a graduated approach is needed and think that if they pay for private EP reports that will somehow speed up the EHCP process. Usually these are senior leaders who opted for the lowest tier of EP support through traded services and are then surprised when they run out of local authority EP hours.

As a very experienced SENCo I’ve had headteachers tell me the graduated approach can be done and dusted in 6 weeks if I “work smarter” - it’s impossible.