@JustKeepBuilding: help, please! (EHCP related)

[EmmatheStageRat]

Hello again @ JustKeepBuilding, please may I pick your brain again on an EHCP related issue? I’ll try to keep it brief…

My DD1(15) is in Y10 at a super selective grammar school, so first year of her GCSE programme; aside from being care experienced, she is FSM, registered blind and diagnosed with neonatal abstinence syndrome, autism, ADHD and binge eating. Despite all these difficulties, we only secured an EHCP last October, 2022. Due to her difficulties, DD spent the majority of 2022 on a Child in Need plan with the LA children’s services.

Finally, all well and good and appropriate levels of support in the classroom. Only not.

I discovered YESTERDAY that DD’s Head of SEND and her SENCo have not actually read the 21-page Plan, five months on, because they’re claiming that they have never received a copy from the LA! Five months on!

School treat me like a hostile witness because they consider I am the square root of all evil because DD presents beautifully in school and only erupts with her violence, aggression and emotional abuse at home. The SEND people NEVER communicate with me about anything. So, I assumed that the EHCP was being followed to the letter of the law.

I only found out the truth because the SENCo phoned me yesterday to say that she was completing my DD’s exam access arrangements (she’s doing a GCSE early) and she didn’t have enough evidence for the exam board and could I please send some ‘snippets’ from the EHCP. I queried this and was told that School didn’t have a record of the EHCP on their system!

I got a hint a month ago when my DD’s Qualified Teacher for the Vision Impaired went into School and queried how my DD’s additional High Needs funding was being spent and the Head of SEND had no clue and I was asked to scan in the funding page from the document and email it directly to the QTVI.

I’ve emailed the LA Specialist Inclusion Team for clarity as to whether the document was ever sent to School and, if so, when; radio silence. I’ve involved SENDIASS and they have emailed senior managers within SEND and children’s services; radio silence.

Please, what are my next steps? My DD is missing her target GCSE grades (proven through a monitoring support sent home tonight) because she is not receiving appropriate support in her classes because the School team that should be supporting her aren’t, because they haven’t read her EHCP…I could weep. As if adoptive parenting wasn’t already hard enough!

@JustKeepBuilding, sorry, I didn’t @ you correctly. Fingers crossed that you pick this up and can offer some advice.

I don’t believe the school haven’t received a copy of the EHCP. At the very least they would have received the draft when they were being consulted. Besides if they didn’t have a copy why haven’t they done anything about it, like ask the LA. Email the HT, SENCO and governor (if applicable) responsible for SEN reminding them they have a duty to make their best endeavours to meet a pupils SEN and that includes ensuring they have a copy of their EHCP and actually reading it.

Email the LA’s Director of Children’s Services informing them of the situation and reminding them the duty to provide the provision specified and quantified in F is theirs. If the provision in F is specified and quantified go on to state if the provision is not provided you will be forced to pursue judicial review proceedings. If that fails contact SOSSEN for help with a pre-action letter. If the EHCP is woolly it can’t be enforced and you should request an early review.

@JustKeepBuilding , hurrah! Thank you so much! I agree, I don’t believe that the school hasn’t received a copy of the final EHCP either. My issue is that no one from the LA is responding to me to clarify if the EHCP was sent, and when. I’m assured repeatedly that my LA’s SEND team is in total disarray with everyone senior off on long term sick leave and interim consultants running the department.

I rather suspect - from a comment made to me by my daughter’s QTVI, who is now also on long term sick leave after surgery (but who is amazing and an incredible advocate for my DD and is still available at the end of the phone) that there is a technological fault between the LA and school and my DD’s Head of SEND, who is a massive technophobe, has not wanted to show herself up by not being able to access a password-protected secure document.

I do know that School received a copy of the draft document and thought it great; it absolutely wasn’t and an SEN specialist from a residential college for the blind helped take it apart and then expand it to 21 pages. I’m sure it’s not perfect but I was pleased to go from a position of having no EHCP - and being told that my BLIND child didn’t need one - to getting an EHCP with additional High Needs funding. If only the buggers who were meant to read it actually had done so!

How long do you think I should give it before emailing the Director of Children’s Services? She and I will soon be sending each other postcards from our respective holidays, given the to and fro correspondence about the lack of support for care experienced children in our borough! 😅 Honestly, I’m a conflict-free person in the rest of my life!

I would email the Director of Children’s Services now. Don’t worry about thinking you are contacting them too often.


If QTVI provision is in F and the current one is on long term sick the LA should be sourcing cover if, as I suspect, there is provision that can’t be provided via the phone.

Interesting feedback, thank you. I hadn’t thought to complain about the lack of QTVI support. Also, my DD is meant to have specialist habilitation support to teach her independent living skills and mobility skills with her fairly recently issued long cane. DD only lost the majority of her sight at age 11 and she has recently lost another significant chunk of her functional vision (all due to being born addicted to heroin and methadone). DD’s habilitation specialist has cancer and is unlikely to return to work. No replacement has been offered. It seems shitty to complain about people who have given their heart and soul to help my DD - but now all of her support has fallen off a cliff.

You aren’t complaining about the people off sick, that can’t be helped and you could mention how helpful and supportive they have been, but your focus is the LA still have a duty to provide the provision so should be organising alternatives, especially as the absences are going to be long term.

@JustKeepBuilding , I know this is incredibly cheeky but could I PM the pages within DD’s Section F to see if you think it is fit for purpose? There are seven pages in this section but I’m starting to think it’s a bit crap - but better than the draft EHCP that probably had about seven pages in total.

Of course you can.

Thank you, just scratching my head and figuring out how to PM you with the photos of the pages…

I don’t think you can PM photos. I will PM you.

You could dropbox photos maybe?

A really boring update for everyone but I am hoping that @JustKeepBuilding and @TeenDivided read this. So, quite unbelievably, my DD’s Head of SEND, has emailed me with a full and frank admission that the Final EHCP, issued last October, has never been read by anyone at her grammar school. I read the email a few days ago, my jaw dropped open and then I shut it down for a few days to digest this breath-taking admission; I reopened the email last night and, sure enough, the content has not changed!

Where do I go from here? (@JustKeepBuilding I can forward on the email from school but I think you have changed names?)

I have name changed but I’m still around. I have just replied to your PM. I am happy for you to forward the email if you want, but I’m not sure it would change my reply via PM.

It is appalling.

That is outrageous, but I have no advice just sympathy.
It is beyond shocking.

@JustKeepBuilding @TeenDivided thank you so much for responding. It’s great to know that it’s not me sometimes and it is, in fact, them (every adopter’s self doubt and neurosis). Just to flip the other side of the educational coin, DD2’s head teacher has responded to my request for advice as she was waiting to board her plane for her well-deserved holiday to be reunited with her adult children. DD2’s headteacher is involved with my family as DD2 is receiving school- provided therapy because of DD1’s violence, aggression and emotional abuse.

Like I texted to DD2’s head: if you were a head of SEND at a school, would you not prioritise the child who is adopted/Free School Meals/registered blind/diagnosed with a brain injury and autism and ADHD? I actually cannot believe that her school has got things so completely wrong for a child who brings in extra funding and ticks such a lot of Ofsted access boxes (selective grammar school).

It’s most certainly not you! Sadly nothing surprises me now. So many children failed over and over again by ‘the system’.

DD2’s HT sounds lovely, I’m so glad you have someone supportive in your corner.

Just to update this - very boring - thread…so, just before the Easter school holidays, I responded to the Head of SEND to thank her for her honesty and to advise that I would be submitting a formal complaint to the headteacher. I did do this and I also emailed the LA case workers and SEN department heads. The LA came back to me super-quickly, asking for a full timeline plus all email correspondence. I will provide this tomorrow as we have been away on holiday. Can I ask, how seriously will School take this complaint (new super-head, TV star)? Will my complaint be considered at the next Ofsted inspection (Outstanding grammar school, not inspected for 12 - I think - years. I really want other parents of SEN children to be aware of the pitfalls of choosing this school.)

The school should take the complaint very seriously. As to whether they actually will is another matter.

Once you have exhausted the school’s complaints policy you could see whether Ofsted will take the complaint on. They may not as they won’t look at individual cases but you could look whether they will take on a complaint about the school’s treatment of pupils with SEN as a population.

@JustKeepBuilding , thanks so much for being interested and all your invaluable advice. I will look forward to a response from the head within the next fortnight as the complaints policy specifies a reply within 10 school days and we have obviously had the Easter holiday. I’ve just re-read the case law regarding the responsibilities of the LA and now I can see why they responded to my email so quickly (previously unheard of).