Are SEN case workers to be trusted?

You’re missing the point - I’m perfectly aware of the decision making ability of a caseworker, abd yes, they don’t have much and their hands are tied by management.

So they are forced to deliver an unlawful service. And the decision as to whether to discharge the LAs legal duty, using EP reports as an example, shouldn’t be something that goes to “exceptional funding” groups - that’s absurd. They have an absolute duty to assess and issue within 20 weeks and it is entirely within the gift of the LA to appropriately commission this.

So the caseworkers and the rest of the SEN team, paid for by the public purse, daily act unlawfully. Hideous.

No it doesn’t. That’s utterly untrue.

In my experience, most case workers mean well and want to help. They are tied up in hierarchy though. I've always got what I needed in the end. I have two girls in independent special schools, and one who was at a SEN college with 1:1, but is currently having a more bespoke provision secured.

No, the decision to go outside the LA Service and use about 4 times as much public funds to provide the same service has to.

You are grossly overestimating the decision making powers of a caseworker.

They are typically the same grade as a mid scale teacher or social worker, on about 32-38k a year. Their decision making capacity it limited to pre agreed funding levels in mainstream schools.

Decisions about exceptional funding and special school places go to a panel of LA management, EPs, special school heads and other professionals.

The caseworkers role is not really a decision making role, not in terms of finances anyway.

Private statutory advice is statutory advice to inform an EHC needs assessment. They can't just use a generic EP report geared to help school understand needs etc. It has to have been commissioned as as statutory advice for an EHC needs assessment.

This is ridiculous. What doe you think they are doing with the funding they are "guarding"?

Do you think there is an army of independent EPs sitting round waiting to be instructed? It's LA EPs doing some extra work on the side, doing a few here and there.

All these people tho think there are easy answers, you should apply to work in children's services should come and sort it all out for us!

I can confidently state that I have never had my expectations raised by anyone at the LA who wrote an EHCP and I have seen hundreds.

The problems in SEND are multiple and complex. There is no system and the laws around education and SEND and equality and disability were all written and passed at different times and don't make much sense when applied in the actual schools.
And so many professionals involved in the process don't work in schools so literally have no idea what is possible or practical. LA SEND officers are like everyone else in the world, some good some not so good. They have an overwhelming amount of work and they can't fix all situations. Specialist provisions are almost always massively over subscribed .
However I have come across some professionals who don't seem to have been brought up properly and have no manners at all!
But on the other hand parents often have their expectations raised by the folk who write EHCPs and are therefore very disappointed by what mainstream schools are actually like.

No! They just guard the funding and try to prevent school from receiving any

I remember the joy in our caseworker's voice when she rang me to say they had a place for my son in a specialist unit. (I immediately said please could I have that in writing? She assured me she would do that straight away, then of course did no such thing. But anyway.)

I think they are mostly nice people with an absolutely impossible workload, working in an utterly toxic environment. I believe that in our LA there is institutional dishonesty, obfuscation and breaking of the law. They are told to systematically stonewall people asking very reasonably for things their very distressed child has a legal right to. It must be horrendous to work in those circumstances.

Do you see what you’ve said there?

The decision to commission a private report (which is actually a statutory minimum requirement) is 4 grades above a caseworker…

Therein lies the problem. They don’t have the ability to follow the law, even if they wanted to.

What do you mean by “private statutory advice”?

If the LA block booked assessments with private EPs and made it worth their while to do it, then they would. But unfortunately for the LA, independent private EPs actually tend to write their reports correctly, ie with specific and quantified recommendations, which the LA hate. Their own in house ones write shite about “would benefit from access to” and other nonsense. So from the LAs position it’s not in their interest to expedite the EHCPs with private reports, but they can absolutely 100% do it if they want to.

There are a limited number of EPs offering private statutory advice. I tried to find one when my son was being assessed and their waiting list was 12 months, longer then the LA EP service.

And a decision to commission a private EP report would have to go 4 plus grades above a caseworker, at least to the service lead in my area.

Mostly ignore the parents. Communication is appalling.

So what happens then? If they don't support the parents do they at least the parents to live as they can or they just bother the parents with endless demands. Which way is it

I've had good working relationships with most of ours, over the years, even the one I needed to get up to speed very fast at the time DS2 was transitioning from primary to secondary. The school made sure she had observed him herself before the next time we met and then she Understood.

Bullshit excuse. They could commission private EP reports. But they’d rather kick it into the long grass because they don’t actually have to pay for anything until the plan is issued. As for the statutory 20 week deadline, some LAs have decided to ignore that, entirely for their own ends.

They are protecting budgets and their jobs and pension, they are not protecting children.
Five years and our ehcp isn't in place, not even been for annual review, nor do we have a coordinator, child with no education in place, despite being enrolled at a school. Lost in a despicable tribunal system where the la are allowed to delay, lie and ignore all deadlines. It's terribly abusive to families who have to live through it. All these people writing reports, making assumptions and not even meeting the child or speaking to the family. It's truly disgusting, one big tick box exercise with no care for the human

its not always the case officers fault- the system is not fit for purpose. Countless kids are being failed. There seems to be no timely support for half of kids so things escalate massively before they even reach the assessment stage.

Then the delays are not always down to the case officers. In our LA there is a huge backlog and shortage as there simply aren’t enough EPs. The LA won’t issue a EHCP without an EP report - and currently there is a 6 month wait for an EP appointment.

The shortage of EPs can’t be fixed in a hurry - it takes years to train as EP and in our region there are only something like 10 training places a year…

It’s quicker, easier and cheaper to recruit more case officers - but they can’t actually sign off funding or even make the final decision to issue an EHCP. They are named though and accessible … and easily vilified and blamed for the whole shocking mess that is The SEND system at the moment.

Like everything in life you get good and bad in every job.

We had some who were excellent - really wanted to get the right provision for our kids and some who were absolutely useless and I wouldn’t trust them to feed my goldfish let alone sort my kids education .

not right - but as a parent of a child with sen you have to really keep your eye on how things are going and work with the good staff or fight hard with the bad ones to get what you need for your child.

Hmm…most of them are massively overworked and don’t last long in the job.
if you’re looking for one to tackle the school about interventions not delivered you could struggle.
there are too few specialist places so the SEND caseworkers are instructed to keep children in mainstream for as long as they possibly can.
so they might be reluctant to tackle something that isn’t working well. They’d rather bury their heads in the sand for as long as possible.

I’ve got 3 children with sen. I think that they would very much like to give our children everything they need but their hands are tied by budget restraints. In my experience once you’ve got your ehcp the caseworker will make damn sure the education placement delivers it. I’ve seen very quick changes delivered after a strongly worded email with the caseworker copied in.

ive also found that they’re much more helpful if you’re nice to them.

Their job is nothing to do with benefits.

Caseworkers? Honestly I think they do their best and if they have any moral compass at all, they leave very quickly.

Their managers higher up the food chain? Awful. Absolutely deliberate repeated attempts to entirely flout the law and the reasons they give is that they don’t have the budget and they’re “not allowed” to write in any provision which costs unless the parent has been to tribunal. They will only follow the law when the court compels them - and these are not the actions of reasonable people. Their literal job is to ensure that as little as possible is spent on the most vulnerable people in society. I don’t know how they sleep at night.