Are SEN case workers to be trusted?

[Ricecakesaremyjam]

Are local authority SEN case workers to be trusted? Do they work to serve the child, or on behalf of the school who aren’t delivering EHCP interventions?
Can anyone advise?! Thanks x

Your comments have been fine in tone (if inaccurate in my opinion at times) it's that of others on the thread, and some that you see on social media.

In terms of statutory assessment the school's teachers are not specialist professionals. They are generalists and it is beyond the remit of a teacher (I say this as a previous teacher, Special school teacher and SENCO). I know that's frustrating that there isn't enough capacity amongst those who are specialist professionals but it is what it is. The specialists have years of experience on one particular aspect of SEND, masters quals (or doctorates for EPs). And there are still issues with quality of reports amongst these professionals. They were trained to help children not write medicolegal reports that would be picked apart. It's an imperfect system for sure.

In terms of agreeing placements etc, it baffles me that people expect this could be agreed at caseworker level. There are statutory requirements around the management of public money. It's not confined to the public sector. In a previous life I worked in financial services and was involved with underwriting mortgages and business finance. There were very similar safeguards around decision making and releasing funds. And that was in a bank that made profits in the billions, not a cash strapped LA. Yet nobody takes issue with this.

Agency staff are paid more, but anyone can see the link between people being abusive to caseworkers and problems with recruitment and retention of staff. There are no caseworkers on long term 60k salaries. They are sometimes used as a short term measure to clear a backlog etc.

It's like teaching. Everyone who has ever been in a school thinks they know how to run one.

This is absolutely ridiculous.

It should be ridiculous. But time and time again, the SARs prove otherwise.

Inaccurate for your area maybe, not inaccurate for mine.

I would never think a Caseworker could approve a placement on their own, but (having worked in other industries like yourself) cannot understand why they aren't allowed to make decisions up to a limit. In a different industry, we were allowed to make financial decisions according to our experience/ pay band, e.g. on relatively low salaries ourselves we could sign off over £10,000 per case.

In my experience, LAs (and I've worked with several and lived in a couple) are extremely inflexible about what they will consider evidence. You mention teachers, who you point out are not as experienced as specialists like EPs etc, I understand that but they can still provide very valuable evidence and likely know these children a lot better than someone who has seen them for an absolute maximum of 4 hours.

As far as I'm aware,the SEND Code of Practice is not completely prescriptive about the evidence needed for every single intervention / provision. If you are going to say that is inaccurate, please provide me with the SEND Code of Practice quote which contradicts this so I can read it myself.

In my professional and personal experience, I have seen parents pushing it with asking for over the top provision maybe a dozen times, total, out of the hundreds of families I've encountered.

It's the childish language...

E.g. taking info a parent disagrees with from a report= writing lies.
Not getting EP reports back in time to issue the plan within 20 weeks = the caseworker is choosing to break the law.
Having a day of back to back meetings for perm exclusions/placement breakdowns/ reviews/coproduction meetings plus some time to write EHCPs = ignoring parents and not bothering to reply to emails.

People would take these concerns more seriously if they were process focused and not personal attacks on caseworkers (accusing people of lying is an personal attack, accusing an LA of producing an inaccurate report is not ...can you see the difference?...)

I try not to get wound up because some of the people using this languages just don't have the life and professional experience to understand this, but it feels relentless to those in the service.

How many SARS requests have you viewed? My LA has 13,000 EHCPs under management. Wecn if you have seen a few, it's a tiny percentage.

Same with tribunal. Hundred of EHCPS are written by an LA each months a handful go to tribunal. Sometimes because the parent wants something that the LA can't give (e.g. a place in a full school) that tribunal can. It is what it is.

The caseworkers will be as pissed off with EP reports etc lacking specificity as much as anyone else. They still can't overrule what's in the report and make up their own version.

This is what I mean about people treating the caseworkers like verbal punchbags for their frustration with a broken system.

But sometimes they do actually lie, in a recent case of mine a Case Officer said something in a meeting to me with an independent witness and then said she never said that. I gave her manager the independent witness write up and the whole thing was just never spoken of again.

Hopefully it's not very often, but they do sometimes literally lie.

"Sometimes because the parent wants something that the LA can't give (e.g. a place in a full school) that tribunal can." LAs are legally authorised to do this.

Well I am sure that I can find isolated examples of someone backtracking from a meeting in just about any industry, and yet we don't start character assassinations of all those who work in the industry.

Also, as a manager in the LA I have seen plenty of times that people will twist what an officer has said to their own ends. Again this is such a source of stress, having to choose every single sentence that leaves your mouth in case it is misrepresented.

Either way, my point is that the attacking language on someone just because of the sector they work in is unacceptable.

something that the LA can't give (e.g. a place in a full school) that tribunal can

Legally, this isn’t the case. If Tribunal can Order it, the LA can agree to it. LAs don’t have to force parents to appeal to SENDIST.

It isn’t just a matter of parents disagreeing. Sometimes LAs outright lie. I have seen thousands of SARs over the years - it really isn’t a tiny %. If LAs don’t want to be accused of that, they shouldn’t do it. Often when parents say the LA is ignoring them, they are talking about far longer than 1 day.

Thank you. I only ever do personal SARs if I absolutely have to because it's so fucking upsetting. It's not just lies but the horrible, sarcastic way they talk about parents. With lies it's not just disagreements but literally like written examples of professionals admitting something is wrong and making decisions not to let us know in writing.

I feel so upset for my children.

You can't keep squeezing kids in. So there has to be some sensible decision making and you make an exception for tribunal, what else can you do. If a school is built for 60 kids per year, you can squeeze a couple extra in, but not the extra 100 who have asked for a place. So a couple extra get squeezed in through tribunal. That doesn't mean the LA could have just chucked an extra 100 kids into a year group. You have to draw the line somewhere. This is where it's frustrating to deal with people who know what the law says but have never had to apply it across a whole cohort of kids.

The system needs a wholesale change, starting with education provision. As many children as possible are made to attend one narrow type of provision that cannot meet all the different needs. Lack of teachers means that accommodations are harder to make. Blanket strict behaviour policies are widespread because there aren't the staff to deal with individual needs. There aren't sufficient pastoral staff. Cuts to local authority funding from 2010 onwards means the idea of needing to save money has become entrenched across all sectors.

It now seems to be ingrained in all local authorities that all SEND provision must be the cheapest that can be offered. I have seen this as a teacher and as a parent. My autistic DD who is barely attending school has a very well-written report by the EP but the LA are refusing to include the wording from her report which specifies exactly what provision she requires. The only reason they give is that they believe the provision should be "flexible", which is absolutely not what the professional report says. It is obvious that they just don't want to put in something that might cost more. It's not individuals who work there who are to "blame", especially those who are lower down the hierarchy, but it is an all-pervading attitude.

It's all a complete mess. It doesn't look like either schools or local authorities are going to get an increase in funding any time soon, so it will be more children who continue not to get the education they deserve. In the long run it will mean there are more children who grow up ending up unable to work because of their experiences in the education system so it won't be saving any money at all.

It's the childish language...
E.g. taking info a parent disagrees with from a report= writing lies.

It's not parents disagreeing. It's blatant lies.
Caseworker to SENCO: yes, I can confirm we have received all necessary documents for panel.
Caseworker to panel: School have not submitted necessary documents.

Not getting EP reports back in time to issue the plan within 20 weeks = the caseworker is choosing to break the law.

More the LAs breaking law than caseworkers, hence 97% success rate at tribunal. Ridiculous amount of illegal decisions. Mostly, a known delay tactic because it takes so long to get to tribunal, the LA saves a fortune on not paying for legally needed provision.

Having a day of back to back meetings for perm exclusions/placement breakdowns/ reviews/coproduction meetings plus some time to write EHCPs = ignoring parents and not bothering to reply to emails.

How does 1 day of back to back meetings excuse 6 MONTHS of ignored communication. Phonecalls to office, phonecalls to direct line and emails all ignored. And calling daily because it was desperate so "lost in the big pile of work" excuse doesn't work.

It's not "childish language" fgs. It's what parents are being forced to put up with over and over again.

Tribunals are successful because the LA has acted unlawfully. Parents shouldn’t have to appeal to get the LA to comply with the law. There is nothing stopping LAs agreeing to name a school when they can’t prove one of the legal exceptions.There is a difference between when LAs and school claim the school is full and when they can prove the legal threshold of incompatibility. That is why so many appeals are successful. Obviously there is a point LAs can prove incompatibility, but that threshold is much higher than LAs like to claim.

Sorry, have you been privy to the goings on of councils for the last 23 years like I have? As a parent? Because if not, you have no right to call me ridiculous.

’Childish language’, eh? I am not at all surprised that you are a council worker because you clearly harbour the same, ingrained level of contempt for parents of disabled children that I have seen time and time again within my own council.

If a parent dares to call out the fact that Local Authorities lie (which they do!) it’s childish now?

I have won 3 tribunals which shows that my proposals were suitable and the LA’s were not. Your attempts at gaslighting aren’t going to go down well.

I recorded our Head of SEND admitting lyingat d's AR in a meeting at my home, she also acknowledged that the school HT had also lied at theAR which my solicitor attended The HT later admitted also lying after I offered her the recording and she had checked with LA whether to admit she had lied.
Tbf by that point I didn't particularly care as it was a meeting to discuss transition to independent specialist that I'd secured through SENDIST so I imagine Head of SEND felt safe to admit lying knowing I'd take it no further. I suspect if Head of SEND was comfortable lying then quite possibly caseworkers felt it acceptable too as attitudes tend to filter down the ranks.
Never been rude or abusive to any SEND staff although was incensed when one caseworker doctored the Tribunal ordered EHCP to remove provision but again an email to Head of SEND asking that I got the Tribunal ordered EHCP before I involved a solicitor to push for JR sorted that quickly.

I’m pretty irritated and unmoved by the attempts of LA staff playing the victim on this thread.

You do an awful lot of assuming with your ‘verbal punch bag’ comments. I don’t bother to bandy words with anyone. I keep everything in writing, reminding the LA of their legal obligations and I use the legal process if necessary and stick to what the law says. If LAs did this, threads like this wouldn’t exist 🙄

I'm a SEND parent, I've. Been through the delayed EHCPs, placement breakdowns, twenty odd consults to find a school, months late EP report. You don't need to tell me what SEND parents go through.

On terms of your experience, maybe your caseworker lied, maybe (more likely in my opinion) they made a mistake, forgot what they said, thought they had said something they hadn't etc.)

I am so sick of the phrase 'breaking the law'. It's like sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting 'la la la'. If a caseworker is meant to issue a plan on 1 June and they don't get the EP report until August what can they do? If the EP can write 3 reports a week and but 10 need to be done this week to be in timescale what can they do? They will probably work late and rush and get an extra couple done but are still behind and the quality might dip a bit too. The LA advertise for locum and addition EPS but there aren't enough qualified in the UK to fill the vacancies. To stamp your feet and say 'its the law' is factually correct, but nobody can make this achievable in the current climate.

I really didn't make clear that the diary demands are what caseworkers diaries look like every day. There is no capacity to be giving updates about each report etc and stuff gets missed. No reply in months is unacceptable I agree. I can see it happening though, I know of a small neighbouring LA that did not have a single perm Casework for about 6 months, and we're managing entirely in agency staff whilst they recruited because everyone left. In their managers situation I would direct my team to focus on getting through the work rather than working back through Comms. I would probably have sent out a massive Comms to explain.
Luckily my LA now have a system that parents can log into and see what's happening. This will hopefully be rolled out more widely.

The use of this language absolutely is childish as it suggests it is a character flaw of individuals not a broken system. The most frustrating is that our SEN team, like my virtual school team, are mainly made of up people who have always worked with children, have their own kids with needs etc and feel drawn to this work to make a difference.

I'm a SEND parent too actually. Do what you like with your records (I do the same) but just don't personally attack individuals because of the system they work in.

Some genius up thread suggested that the caseworkers have the option to leave. Imagine if they all did,that would really help the backlog.

The frustrating thing is, if people put this much energy and vitriol into challenging the government we might get somewhere. Calling Sandra in The LA down the road a cow because she forgot to phone you back at the end of a rammed day is not.

The use of this language absolutely is childish as it suggests it is a character flaw of individuals not a broken system. The most frustrating is that our SEN team, like my virtual school team, are mainly made of up people who have always worked with children, have their own kids with needs etc and feel drawn to this work to make a difference.

Your posts aren’t coming across as though you have an ounce of respect for the parents of disabled children.

If you want to take my lived experience as a personal affront, maybe you should reflect upon the fact that working in a system where quite a number of people are expected to be disingenuous on a daily basis as part of their job, may start to grind you down after a while. You can’t make a difference in such a system. It’s impossible.

If you bothered reading my post you would know that I both work in an LA role supporting the education of children in care and am the parent of three disabled children. Why do some SEND parents think they invented having disabled kids and that nobody who worked in education could have experienced this?

There is nothing wrong with calling out an LA on its performance, there is something wrong with name-calling staff as liars, who 'can't be arsed' etc because they have a bigger workload than they can get through.

You’re the one calling me ‘childish’ when what I said was a factual retelling. And you’re the one being attacked?

nobody can make this achievable in the current climate.

Except it is achievable once parents take enforcement action. Parents should be supported to do that rather than accept unlawful behaviour.

Ah well, if you can't make a difference that makes it ok to namecall and bully individuals 🙄 that will definitely sort the system out...