Would you complain ?

[jimmyateworld]

Ds 11 goes to a special school, he’s starting his high school tomorrow. I’m so annoyed with how badly it’s all been handled by the county council.

I applied for his high school back in September/october 25 and handed the application in in person, I wanted to be sure it got there okay. Come may I still hadn’t heard if he had his place, in the end I had to ring the high school directly to see if he was on their list. This was after a couple of months of unanswered emails and phone calls to the Sen department at the council.

Once I found out ds had his place at school I could then sort the transport, you have to apply for this and you are told whether you are eligible or not, before applying the school MUST be names in the child EHCP, guess what I realised ? Ds school wasn’t named in his plan meaning I couldn’t apply. Cue panic stations becuse you cannot get in touch with anybody at the councils Sen department to ask what the hell has happened! Eventually ds primary school got involved and somehow managed to contact the Sen department for me, I then had an email off ds keyworker who had ignored me for the last year. She approved the transport herself and apologised for ds EHCP not being updated properly after the last review.

Next thing is I’ve literally only found out yesterday what company is providing ds transport to high school, this is after numerous emails of me harassing the council to find this out. Usually you would receive a call from the company a few weeks before school starts to organise a meet and greet, the driver and passenger assistant will come out and meet your child and introduce themselves so the child with special needs knows what to expect etc. l’ve just managed to speak to the taxi company myself and find out the drivers name so I can at least tell ds that, and also what sort of time to expect them.

Honestly it’s all been such a shambles, I’ve had to organise everything myself it seems, even down to finding out if ds is even in our preferred school.

Ds keyworker told me she’s only just come back to work after long term sickness, so I think what’s happened is nobody at the council picked up her workload maybe ? And that’s why ds got forgotten about.

Would I be unreasonable to put a formal complaint in? Luckily I am quite pro-active (I’ve learnt to be from dealing with this whole EHCP process and getting ds into a special school)
Some parents may not be as organised as me or need extra support so I worry how they would cope with this shit show.

It is unclear from your post whether you now have a finalised EHCP naming the secondary placement or not. Do you?

There should have been a phase transfer review meeting in the autumn term of Y6 and the phase transfer EHCP naming the secondary placement should have been finalised by the 15th Feb of Y6. In case it is relevant to you in the future or for anyone else reading, when an AR meeting wasn’t held in time &/or it wasn’t finalised in time didn’t happen, if chasing wasn’t working (even if you can’t contact the SEN department, you can still email the Director of Children’s Services. It doesn’t always get a reply, but sometimes it prompts action.), you could have looked at a pre-action letter then JR if necessary. If you don’t yet have a finalised EHCP naming the secondary placement, you should consider this now even though you have sorted transport.

If you already have the finalised EHCP, I would complain. If you don’t, if you want to go down the pre-action letter route, I would do that instead now because the formal complaint process takes too long.

Unfortunately, transport arrangements are often last minute and while sometimes meeting beforehand is possible, it isn’t always. I know that doesn’t mean it easy to deal with and plan.

Hi, sorry I wasn’t clear, yes we do now have the finalised EHCP naming ds school placement, but that only happened because I noticed it and told the primary school, they then said oh well that can’t be changed now unless we do an emergency meeting, which won’t happen this late in the year… I said ds won’t get transport if no school is named in his plan, luckily someone at school took pity and managed to get someone from the council to finally contact me, who then amended it. They admitted it was an error on their side. Ds was forgotten about due to his Keyworker going off sick, I’m sure of it.

In that case, yes, I would complain to the LA about the LA not finalising the phase transfer EHCP by 15th Feb. If they didn’t hold an AR meeting in the autumn term of Y6, I would also include not holding an AR meeting when they should have in the complaint too.

I’ve had the same. Actually- more on the list. I can’t go into it, too long.

No energy now to complain.
I doubt it will get you anywhere or make it easier for future parents.

Better to rant on here.

I feel your pain.
The battle is long.

Save your energy making your DS happy. That’s all that matters.

This is the thing, they did hold the AR last October, so god knows what happened!

It’s never ending isn’t it ? We shouldn’t be having to fight battle after battle

The system is so broken. I can’t see it improving anytime soon. They spend the money elsewhere.
Well, sending you a virtual hug.
Join a support group. They help.

One thing about us, we never give up.

My son starts specialist secondary school in 2 days. Transport is approved. Have they told me anything? Nope. How can I prepare him (or myself) if I have no idea what is happening.

What do you want the outcome of your complaint to be? Clearly what has already happened cannot be changed so I would say be clear about what you want to achieve with a complaint.

Once you know that you can weigh it up against the emotional effort & time taken to complain to decide if it is worth doing.

Personally I would put in a complaint asking for an acknowledgment that they have failed in their support on this occasion but I honestly wouldn’t expect anything meaningful to come of it.

You're not unreasonable and by all means complain, but this is all par for the course in my experience. Shouldnt be.

I've never heard of transport doing meet and greet. Normally they're still sorting routes out in August.
We normally find out which transport company it is a week before the term starts. Sometimes the day before. (One year it was 2 weeks after term started. All shit, for sure.) We don't get the pick up times or any other info.

This year we found out because the passenger assistant (who we had last year and is amazing) called us to let us know. Not at all her job.
Also, first day of term the transport is always AWFUL. We always have a plan B after the first year when they arrived at 10.30am.

why.??..youre sorted now......."luckily i am quite proactive"..so your going to harass a department that has thousands of SEN transport applications to sort out.... you should know they send out tenders for transport and have to wait to see who "wants" your son...youve said youve been "harrassing " the council...you sound very entitled

It's constant fighting. I have one DC who was given an EHCP easily but it then took 6 months of faffing about before things were implemented so they basically missed a whole year of school.
Then the other one I'm on the second tribunal for, it's clear to everyone except the LA that full time mainstream school is simply not possible.

Everything seems to be like this nowadays. I spent weeks chasing down a medical referral that seemed to have vanished into the ether. If it was someone less able they’d have been forgotten about forever…

Probably because school started this week…

To answer the why question from pp, there is a reason why secondary phase transfer EHCPs must be finalised by 15th Feb. Where LAs fail to do so, DC are disadvantaged. For example, it frustrates a parent’s right of appeal, it delays transition arrangements which can start earlier and be much longer and involved for DC with SEN, it delays preparing DC, it causes stress and anxiety for parents and DC. There is a reason why it is one of the areas the LGO will look at (and make a decision on a remedy for the injustice where appropriate) when parents exhaust the LA’s complaints process without satisfactory answer. It doesn’t make parents ‘very entitled’.

Also, when LAs see parents don’t challenge unlawful behaviour, they are more likely to act unlawfully in the future.

It's pointless. 50% of the caseworkers will be on long-term sick. 6 months full pay, 6 months half pay, pop back in for a bit, go off sick again. Tidy.

Have you ANY experience of SEN? If you did then you’d realise that if you don’t “harass” then you get absolutely fucking nowhere. So don’t you come on here judging me, a very stressed out parent of not one, but 3 Sen children. Have a look on the Sen support board and you’ll see many other parents in my situation, it is not acceptable and we shouldn’t have to accept it.

Edit - just to add this is the 3rd time I’ve been through the transport process, I’m not new to it and this is by far the worst experience, due to council cuts.

I guess acknowledgement that they dropped the ball with ds a few times already.

Hi, we’ve always had meet and greets, hence me wondering why it hasn’t happened this time. I agree the passenger assistants are always brilliant

Completely disagree with you.
This mom has been doing everything in her power to ensure an organised transition to high school.
she doesn’t sounds entitled at all. She’s pissed off, with every right to complain.

If you have energy - complain. It’s unacceptable they can continue like this. Whatever their reason isn’t good enough and you shouldn’t have to put up with it. If parents make enough noise eventually they have to listen to SEN parents and stop sidelining them due to lack of budget. Returning calls is common courtesy and in any other job if you ignored someone for a year there would be issues to answer.

Hats off to you OP, it's a total nightmare and they don't seem to factor in that all this uncertainty would be stressful for an average child, but for a send child it's a total nightmare because they likely have a need for much more stability and routine and cant cope with a total stranger turning up at any old time whilst taking them to a totally new place (I doubt many kids would cope with that tbh)! It's hard enough trying to manage day to day life for parents when juggling additional needs and everything else, without adding school and transport into the mix. It's the double whammy of life already being much more challenging for us (parents) and children with send, but then all the processes around this (and dla, and access cards and going/doing/receiving any support) are way harder than they should be.

I'd put in a short formal complaint, maybe with a specific request that they work a process out for when a key worker is off long term? I think generally complaints aren't actually helpful unless there's something that can be done - but it sounds like here there was a gap in the process when she went off? In which case, an easy investigation into why and a fix could stop someone else having this problem. I do think this area is so woefully funded, everyone does try hard and is working as much as they can- so just a general complaint can't really do much, but if you've spotted a really clear and specific gap they need to fix then it's worth raising it.
I hope the new school works for your son and he has a good day.

If it has been caused by lack of work being transferred due to sickness then a reasonable outcome would be a clearly documented policy of how work will be transferred to prevent this happening again.

My exDH owns a taxi company, he ALWAYS went to meet parents and children before a school contract and was never late

do you have any idea how much this service costs???

The meet and greets sound really good. I would have loved that for my son. I'm sorry it didn't happen this time as it should.