Help Needed

[kazra1]

Hi,

I am new to the forum and would really need some advice. I have a disabled son who applied for a reception place on medical & social grounds but due to what i consider to be procedure breaks by the local authority he was denied the chance to provide full evidence.

Although we appealed and the Local authority conceeded on almost everything the appeals panel did not take into account the new information because they did not consider the admissions code broken.

My question relates to what a panel consider the admnission code as it seems they tend to focus on the criteria and very little else. There were also factors such as evidence the authority having received over 2 weeks prior to the initial panel sitting only being passed to the panel on the day that they sat and AFTER their medical expert had provided her evidence.

Our argument that this is not fair or a fair process was ignored and it is by no means the only breach of procedure they made.

Can someone please advise me if we have any grounds in which to take legal action because the authority have 'sat' on our medical evidence until the day, is this fair considering for other cases would have had the chance to be viewed over a longer period?

We were an out of borough application and we feel strongly that we were just placed to one side and not been given full consideration, we would really love to have someone independant examine our evidence of procedure breaks but we cant even get an organisation to look at it.

We are still waiting for parent partnership to contact us after 7 weeks, ipsea and Ace will not even consider our son without a statement (we did not even know about statements until this week).

Please if you have any advice let me have it as our son does not have a school to go to, the authority have offered one but for medical reasons he cant attend it.

What age is your son - ie what school year were you applying for a place in?

And can you confirm what evidence you provided with your original application? Did it include, for example, a letter from DS's consultant which stated "school X is in my professional opinion, the only one which can provide Y which DS requires"?

Also, where exactly in the published criteria list is exceptional social/ medical need?

It is totally correct for an appeals panel to focus on whether the admission procedure was carried out correctly and that the criteria were correctly applied.

You need to apply for a statutory assessment with a view to getting a statement the template letter is here if your son's disability means he will have extra needs in school.
Personally I believe it is easier to do this before entry into school as then he won't need to fail first and school won't need to prove they have put in all support possible and it is still not enough.
So for me I'd keep him on the waiting list and home ed in the meantime.
The advantage of a statement besides securing a legal right to a differentiated education to meet a child's needs is that it also gives you the right to choose the best school for your child regardless of catchments and waiting lists.
It is disappointing to say the least that you weren't alerted to special educational needs by the paed, portage, OT, SALT or any other professional involved in ds's care tbh.

I am, to say the least, surprised that ACE won't help you. They help a lot of families with admissions cases where the child does not have a statement. However, if you would like to post details of how you think the LA got this wrong I will take a look and advise. Feel free to PM me if you don't want to post the information publicly.

As EdithWeston says, on the assumption that this is an infant class size case the only questions the appeal panel can consider are:

• do the admission arrangements comply with the Admissions Code
• have the admission arrangements been administered correctly
• was the decision to refuse admission unreasonable

So the panel has to look at whether the LA made the correct decision based on the information it had available at the time. Unless the LA is itself responsible for a lack of necessary information, the panel cannot admit your child on the basis of medical evidence that was not available to the LA.

You say that you were denied the chance to provide full evidence of your son's medical problems. I find it difficult to see how you were denied that chance. I would expect that the information published by your LA made it clear that all such evidence should be submitted with your application. If you did, it should have been passed on to the school's LA.

I am concerned that the LA did not pass your medical evidence to the panel members until the hearing was in progress. That is a serious breach of procedure which you may be able to use to get a second appeal with a different panel. But there is no point doing that unless you have a realistic chance of winning.

Thanks for the comments so far, other contributions are welcome as the more help the better.

EdithWeston- My son is 4 and applying for a place in reception place.

prh47bridge - I will certainly send some information and your feedback is appreciated.

The bone of contention is the fact that we were not provided with the full details of the kind of evidence we provided at the time, we provided some but the 'wrong type'. The 1 crucial piece of evidence was not submitted to the panel until the day and after someone had already passed her comments on.

The main question for us is what constitutes a break in procedure? If it is not fair that our evidence was submitted late, could this constitute a breach?

I haven't received anything from you as yet. However, picking up on your latest post, am I correct in saying that you are complaining that you missed out through not knowing what type of medical evidence to submit when you applied?

If you want your child to be considered under the special medical/social needs category (assuming the school has such a category) it is up to you to provide the evidence to support that when you make your application. Most LA's that have this category say in their admissions booklet that you must submit evidence from a doctor, social worker or other appropriate professional setting out why this is the most suitable school for your child. If the LA's admissions booklet contained such a statement and you did not submit appropriate evidence with your application I'm afraid the LA has got it right. If the LA's admissions booklet did not contain such a statement you may have a case but it depends exactly what it did say. If you let me know which LA we are talking about I will take a look.

Even if the appeal panel agree that the admission arrangements were unclear that would not guarantee a successful appeal. They would then have to look at your medical evidence and decide whether it is strong enough to place your child in the special medical/social needs category. You would only win your appeal if they think the medical case is strong enough.

If I have misunderstood and you did submit full medical evidence with your original application you may be able to win an appeal on the basis that the LA was unreasonable in failing to give your child priority on medical/social needs. That is difficult to win - the standard for a decision to be classed as unreasonable is very high. And the appeal panel should only look at the evidence that was available to the LA when they made their decision. Any evidence you submitted later is irrelevant.

Regarding any breach of procedure concerning the appeal itself, this will not result directly in a place for your child. The most you can expect is a second appeal with a different panel, and you will only get that if the breach meant that you were disadvantaged.

The are a couple of things to take into consideration and this is not quite straight forward.

This application was an out of borough application, our home borough did not provide a booklet which explained what information was required, rightly or wrongly we had no idea it existed. Our son attends a nursery out of borough and they supplied booklets to all of their residents but not to us, we were unaware of the existence of a booklet until 10th May this year.

Although we applied under medical and social grounds the borough to which we applied did not request any information but our home borough did (even though we did not apply under social and medical with them), because these asked for evidence we then wondered if we should provide evidence to the borough we were applying and not knowing the type of evidence sent 3 pieces of 'evidence', 2 of which we later found out were irrelevant and the 3rd we have now found out was sent after the panel sat to decide on the evidence.

Basically our home borough did not provide a booklet, they then sat on the evidence we did provide until the day of the panel sitting and the day AFTER the authorities medical expert passed on their comments.

As it turns out no matter what evidence we provided may not have reached the panel on time due to the fact that we were out of borough residents.

The admissions code says that a borough must take reasonable steps to ensure we have a booklet, they are legally obliged to assist a disabled child PRIOR to making an application and they need to ensure that information is passed to the other authority as quickly as possible and none of this was done, does this not class as a breach of the admissions code?

Thanks

When you say 'panel' are you talking about the Appeals Panel or about the panel who sift through the medical evidence to decide whether a child gets a place at initial allocation?

The original panel (the admissions panel) did not receive the relevant document until the day it sat and the day AFTER their 'independent' paediatrician had passed comment on the other documents, she was subsequently asked if the additional document changed her mind AFTER it was made up however.

A-ha! I think some people replying on this thread were reading 'panel' as the appeals panel.

Sorry I can't be of any help at all as I know nothing about this, but hopefully now I've cleared up the semantics the experts might be back to advise!

The strongest part of your case is the delay in passing information from your home LA to the school's LA. That is a breach of the Admissions Code.

I don't know where the 2010 Admissions Code (which is the current one) says that the LA must take reasonable steps to ensure you have a booklet. It says publish the admission arrangements and make the information available for parents. The booklet would have been on their website and should have been sent to you if you asked for an admissions pack. That meets the requirements of the code.

The Admissions Code requires them to ensure they do not discriminate against disabled children. That is the fundamental requirement. That does not mean it is up to the LA to seek out information on your child's disability or advise you if the information you supply is inadequate.

The central question is whether the failure to pass on information promptly cost your child a place. The appeal panel cannot consider information you provided later. They can only look at the evidence that was available to the medical panel and decide whether or not their decision was unreasonable.

prh47bridge - Irrespective of the value of the information withheld (the strongest of the evidence provided), do you think that the appeals panel should have stated that the code was indeed broken as they did not see it this way.

I know you said it does above but would like to double check, we have 1 authority confirming the receipt date in writing and the other confirming the date they received it.

This information was made available to the appeals panel on the day but they have not seen this as a breach. Because this was so important to us during the appeal we concentrated more on what we considered to be a breach of the code and less on the actually evidence provided but our result was that the code was not broken and the evidence on the day was not strong enough.

Thanks

Having taken in your PM (which gives dates) and your latest posts I have a clearer picture of the situation, especially now that the confusion about panels has been cleared up. In particular, I now understand (I think) when you gave evidence to the LA and when they passed it on to the school's LA.

Unfortunately, according to the dates you have given me, you did not submit any evidence with your application. It seems you submitted your evidence over a month after the closing date for applications. Paragraph 2.29 of the 2010 Admissions Code (which applies to this year's admissions) says, "Admission authorities must not give higher priority to children under this criterion (social/medical need) if the required documents have not been produced." That puts the onus on you to produce the required documents at the time you apply. I'm afraid that means I believe the appeal panel is correct and there has been no breach of the Admissions Code.

If you want to take this further you could refer the matter to the Local Government Ombudsman and see if they think there has been a breach. That doesn't cost you anything.

There may or may not have been technical breach of the admissions code from what you have said, but a breach of the admissions code does not give you a place at the school. Only if the breach of the admissions code meant that your child was denied a place at the school will an appeal panel give you a place at the school.
To be honest it is quite common for parents to produce further information on the date of the appeal and whilst in theory a panel could refuse to admit the information as evidence it never actually happens, The panel always accept the late evidence and weigh up the value of it in relation to the appeal. So by the same token it is only fair that the LA can submit late information. The wrinkle here is that the information was actually information that you submitted in relation to the medical evidence.
I am still a little confused at exactly what did happen here, so please tell me if I have got it wrong. You applied for places at schools both in and out of the borough on the basis of medical and social needs. So the first question that needs answering is whether both of the admission authorities had such criteria or not.
Clearly one did and their panel that deals with such requests got an expert opinion over the evidence submitted. They gave an opinion but not based on all the submitted evidence. When they were subsequently asked about this piece of evidence they did not change their opinion, which I assume was that the evidence was not strong enough to justify being considered under the medical and social needs criteria. My understanding is that in these judgements the LA decision is final, so whilst you might not like the decision there is nothing further you can do about it. I am not sure whether the second LA did or did not look at the evidence and when the evidence was submitted. If it was not submitted until after the last date for on time appeals, they would not have considered the evidence as it was late. They would only consider it later as part of the waiting list considerations.
The admission appeal panel for the school would not have been interested in the medical evidence if it was submitted late or if the second LA had determined that you did not warrant a place under the medical criteria. The panel would have been considering whether your application was correctly handled especially if it was an infant class size regs case.
Is this a fair summary or have I not understood properly?
If you want to PM please do so if you feel you do not want to share more information on the public forum.

prh47bridge - we were given the date of 27/2 to provide the evidence and it was submitted and received on 22/2 I am not sure why they would ask for this if it was not even going to be used - no one has said the evidence was late

admission - We applied to our out of borough school on medical grounds and our borough schools on normal grounds (distance criteria).

We listed 3 schools, 2 in borough, 1 out of borough and we did not get offered any of these.

I hope this makes sense

admission - They gave an opinion but not based on all the submitted evidence. When they were subsequently asked about this piece of evidence they did not change their opinion, which I assume was that the evidence was not strong enough to justify being considered under the medical and social needs criteria.

The above is correct as the authority states however there are doubts as to the chain of events as the story from the appeal to now has changed, the authority have admitted that some of the evidence provided at the appeal was not true.

Ok, that is new information. On that basis you produced the evidence in time and it should have been considered. If the school's LA received the information too late for it to be properly considered that is a problem.

If the LA has admitted that some of the evidence provided at the appeal hearing was incorrect you have grounds to go to the Local Government Ombudsman. That may result in a second appeal with a different panel. Indeed, given their admission, I would ask the LA if they will grant a second appeal without needing a reference to the LGO.

Just to help me get things clear, is this the correct sequence of events?

• You applied to your home LA before the deadline (15th January)

• They gave you until 27/2 to produce evidence to support your son's medical needs (was this later deadline on the application form or did they write to you with this information?)

• Your home LA sent the information to the school's LA roughly 2 weeks after it was submitted, at which time the school's LA had already started deciding who qualified for the medical needs category

• The school's LA decided your son did not qualify for the medical needs category and you therefore did not get a place

Is that correct?

• You applied to your home LA before the deadline (15th January)

"YES"

• They gave you until 27/2 to produce evidence to support your son's medical needs (was this later deadline on the application form or did they write to you with this information?)

"YES, the wrote and confirmed this date"

• Your home LA sent the information to the school's LA roughly 2 weeks after it was submitted, at which time the school's LA had already started deciding who qualified for the medical needs category

"YES however, Our home LA confirmed receipt of the information prior to the deadline and the non home LA confirmed that they only received it a little over 2 weeks later - we are awaiting confirmation as to when the home LA actually uploaded this via PAN - the information was also sent to the non home LA a day after the home LA so they had a copy too"

• The school's LA decided your son did not qualify for the medical needs category and you therefore did not get a place.

"Yes this is correct"

Can you let me know the LAs concerned please. I'd like to take a look at their admission arrangements so that I can understand what should have happened. Feel free to PM me.