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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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 it doesn’t. That’s utterly untrue.

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.

It is from the code of practice. (Section 9.49, I have just looked it up).
If they have seen an EP for a more generic report an EP can consult with them rather than conducting a new assessment.
I'm the SEND lead for a Virtual School Team (looking after children in care) and work closely with the SEND and EP teams for needs assessments.
The fact that you are unaware of this does not make it untrue.

I have found the SEND department in my area to be absolutely untrustworthy and not at all bothered about what happens to children who require more than what the average state school can give them.

They tell lies and try to get away with providing as little as possible.

My LA tried to remove my daughter’s EHCP for no other reason than that she was over 18. When I asked them to explain their actions, they ignored me. So I took them to tribunal. At the tribunal, they whined about the money it was costing them, to go to an appeal to which the tribunal chair retorted ‘the reason we’re here is because you cancelled the EHCP’.

They care only about saving money. And that was always the same, even before the Tories bulldozed our public services into the ground.

You sound more ridiculous by the second.
Employees have to do what their boss says, and the boss tells them to comply with organisational policy.
Obviously a situation that happens only in SEND teams...

My advice btw, would be to keep everything in writing. Do not speak to them on the phone. Phone calls can’t be proven. If they propose something unlawful then remind them of the legal position, copying in as many people as you can and even your MP if necessary. They think they can make up their own arbitrary rules. They can’t.

I work within the SEND system and was a caseworker over 10 years ago. I know a lot of caseworkers and they are generally lovely people working within a very stretched system. their hands are often tied and there aren’t enough resources (e.g. specialist places) to go around so there are always unhappy (rightly so) parents. But it isn’t the caseworkers fault. They’re often just the messenger.

I understand your point. But how can you be happy to work within a system that you know is deliberately trying to fail children to save money?

I am quite disgusted by some of the comments on this thread. Imagine going to work, doing your best in a difficult job with what is available to you, and coming on here and reading aggressively toned commends calling you evil, untrustworthy, incompetent, a liar, abusive etc

As I say, I am aware of someone in this role who took their own life and leaves behind two young children after suffering endless abuse from parents, combined with crippling workloads which contributed to her to her mental health crisis and ultimately killed her.

And I have 3 children with SEN, one who was out of school for months and in crisis, delayed EHCP, no school place etc and it impacted our family horrifically. So don't play the 'you don't know what it's like' card.

You (multiple posters) are using individuals in a job as verbal punchbags for your frustrations with a government system. An you have the audacity to take the moral high ground.

They're not trying to 'save money'. There is no money to save. That is the problem.

They are not trying to 'save money' FFS. They are trying to spread what little of it there is around all those in need. Do you think they are squirelling it away for staff Xmas party?!

Also it’s not true that there aren't enough places. Places can be sought out of county but they just don’t want to pay for it.

I’ve won 3 tribunals against my LA and I had another one which they caved on before appeal because I was asking for independent specialist school (state SEN school admitted could not meet needs). They had to agree to what I was asking because their own educational psychologist wrote a report which agreed with my position.

I think the point that’s been made is that they are not trying to ‘save money’ - there just isn’t enough money. When placed at specialist schools cost thousands of pounds and every consultation that goes to schools comes back with we need more money. Private EPs can charge £2k for reports because they know people, including LAs are desperate. And the demand keeps going up.

I’m sorry but that line won’t work on me. The law has not changed. End of story. When my daughter was much younger, under the old Labour government, we had to submit invoices to SEN accounts. The lady who worked there admitted to us that at this time they were ‘well within budget’.

Since the Tories got in again, things have clearly become worse. But that’s not the fault of our disabled children and we don’t want to hear about it.

Don’t you think the parents of disabled children have enough stress without being emotionally blackmailed to feel bad about expecting the LA to follow the law? I’ve been privy to all the goings on in my LA for 21 years. Their rhetoric is the same however much money they have or don’t have. And in any case, it’s not a reasonable excuse to fail disabled children.