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

In our LA, caseworkers with a conscience rarely last more than a few months. Anyone who sticks around does so because they can cope with deliberately causing harm to vulnerable children and their families. Ours is known to be one of the worst but I don't think any LAs can claim to have the interests of the children truly at heart. They can't do the right thing for all the children who need it.

Remember that the caseworker is likely to be directed to behave in an unethocal way to protect LA budgets so, even if they are personally of high moral standing, their actions are likely to be harmful.

I see reprehensible behaviour on a regular basis and they still seem to be able to surprise me as they plumb new depths.

If parents intentionally harmed children that LA staff do, they would often end up in prison.

I had one who was just completely incompetent. Mistakes, just completely awful.

One who was rude

And #3 is super lovely and really helpful

It's hard to be rational when you are dealing with a crisis. I find it highly unlikely that there are 'evil' caseworkers at your LA who are sitting and laughingly choosing not to help your family, taking pleasure in the distress that causes.
I also doubt that there are caseworkers sitting filing their nails and drinking coffee who 'cant be bothered' to deal with your child.
I do think it likely that they have not completed tasks they should have because they are way behind on the workload.
I think you know this deep down, but I understand your anger and frustration. As I said earlier, I have three children with SEND and have personally seen my children suffer because of the shortcomings of the system.

I'm not clear if you are using such a terrible word to describe caseworkers or the children they work with. Either way, get in the fucking bin.

Putting aside whether caseworkers are evil, which I don't think they are, I think the answer to the OPs question is definitely no. LAs are underfunded and they manage their budgets by managing demand. As a parent you need to be aware that they work for the LA and not for your child

I wouldn’t trust them personally. I would get in touch with your local SENDIAS to support you or a paid advocate. Are you confident the EHCP is written in a way to mean the school have to implement the provision. Or does it say lots of “access to” and “up to” type statements? It needs to be water tight to be enforceable.

Do they work to serve the child, or on behalf of the school who aren’t delivering EHCP interventions?

They work for the LA and are trying to cut costs as much as they can.

The ones I have had dealings with in my own and neighbouring LAs over the last 25 years have been good at ignoring emails, passing the buck, not returning phone calls, writing dreadful EHCPs and refusing to take parent or school views on board. None of the ones I have dealt with were teachers-they had backgrounds in admin.

I used to be one and left because I had no training or support, I was given a high caseload without really understanding the process and not explained or trained on the processes. Eventually I learnt the processes or the "way things LA" do it often was against the code of practice which I learnt myself. I quickly left. I got the job because I was experienced in supporting children and families with SENd.

I initially had an awful manager who didn't care about the families we worked with and didn't care about training me. Whenever I asked questions I got told just do this but when I asked why I was told not to question. Eventually I got into a good team with some good case officers and a good managers who tried to challenge the LA panel themselves on decisions. They helped train me and explain why x, y, z was done. But ultimately send case officers are ultimately just the messenger, and collating other professionals reports into an ehcp, albeit it should be a high quality written one (e.g. not just copying and pasting) but case officers do not make decisions. It is usually a panel and oversight from a send manager that makes the decisions.

What's frustrating is it is advertised as being a supportive role, supporting families through the ehcp process, holding meetings with them etc. it wasn't....

So I think you can't trust the system unfortunately and not about the individual person

Ours are largely awful, pleasant but deliberately incompetent because I can't believe that they have been in the role sometimes for years and still fail to grasp the basics. We have an EOTAS co ordinator who can't describe what her role is but every email sent by her contains the words "sorry this isn't my role" when everything asked pertains to EOTAS. Funnily enough though when you send your question to her line manager he directs her to respond so it apparently is her role. The Tribunal lead who my advocate described as a muppet is no longer Tribunal lead as his incompetence deliberate or otherwise cost the LA an extra £40k. I try not to have to communicate with any of them if I can help it tbh as it either results in a formal complaint, Tribunal or threatening Judicial Review.

I know one. Went into the job last year openly stating she would thwart as many applications as possible as she believed a lot of it was rubbish and people just wanted benefits. We are not friends anymore.

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.

Their job is nothing to do with benefits.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Mostly ignore the parents. Communication is appalling.

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.

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.