Proposed statement

[Mumtoprem]

The Sen panel agreed to issue a statement for my dd on 15 May. Yet I am being told repeatedly by LEA that they have until 26 June to issue the proposed statement. I thought they only had 2 weeks once they had made the decision to issue a statement to actually send the proposed statement to parents.

Can anyone clarify?

www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/0581-2001-SEN-CodeofPractice.pdf

Have a look at 8.134. As far as I can see, once the LA has made the decision to issue a statement, they have 2 weeks in which to prepare a proposed statement and send it to you. There are 8 weeks after that that they must issue the final statement, unless you disagree with the proposed one, in which case extra time is allowed. They seem to be looking at the maximum times allowed, but once they have made the decision (which they have?) then they have 2 weeks, then 8 weeks only.

Sounds like my LEA, they tell me something different every time I speak to them and are constantly moving the goalposts.

Do you have a copy of the SENCOP? If you do, the timescales are clearly stated in there and you can quote them to your LEA.

They are also on the NAS site here and another guide here.

Basically they have 26 weeks from when they receive your request to issue the final statement.

We/parents only get a 15 day window to comment on the proposed statement or request a meeting to discuss it, but the actual timings of proposed statements and amends from the LEA point of view seem a little blurry and as long as they come in with the final statement by the 26 week deadline they are acting within the law.

I think that's where it gets blurry though Ellen. I thought the same about the two week window, but it seems they have two weeks to notify parents about their decision to issue or not, but they can produce the proposed statement whenever they like as long as they finalise it before the 26 week deadline.

It sucks and I'm pretty sure that's not how the SENCOP was supposed to be interpreted and I don't think, strictly speaking, it's exactly legal, but they all seem to be saying the same thing at the moment.

Our Statementing Officer really went off on one when we called her on it and they are perilously close to missing their finalised statement deadline because I asked for loads of changes, but despite informing them of this, they failed to even look at my amends for over a month after I submitted them.

Yes, you are probably right, it says 'notify parents of decision' not 'supply parents with proposed statement.' Bugger.

Yes I have the SEN code of practice here. Paragraph 7:87 states "If the LEA decides that a statement or amended statement is necessary, it must draft a proposed statement or proposed amended statement and send a copy to the childs parent within two weeks".

However not sure what I can do as it seems certain the LEA have no intention of meeting this deadline.

Finding the whole thing so stressful, I never realised the incompetence of the local authority until now :-(

Ah, now 7.87 says must which means it has to abide by this if it doesn't want to break the law. Unfortunately some LAs have no problem with breaking the law. It does give you a good position to argue your case from, though.

Oo that's interesting Mumtoprem, I must've missed that.

As you say though, what can you do when they are blatantly ignoring their obligations. You can complain, write to them etc but that's not likely to make the up their game. In fact if my LEA's reaction to a simple question is anything to go by it could well make them less likely to comply.

I think they know that as long as they hit the finalised statement date they are unlikely to have any consequences for fudging the rest of the timeline - unless of course they end up at Tribunal for something else, where it will at least show them in a bad light.

I have been so careful to stay on good terms with everyone, whilst at the same time pushing to get my ds his statement - it feels like walking a very narrow tightrope. I haven't done anything to wind them up, yet they are angry at me for daring to even ask where the amended proposed statement that they offered to issue is. I don't want to fall out with anyone, as I honestly think that if it's at all possible for you to maintain a good working relationship that's got to be best. Nothing is going to get implemented this academic year anyway now, but we need the statement to take with us to prospective secondary school meetings.

You've both hit the nail on different head there.

I think a lot of this sort of thing is caused by LEA incompetence rather than deliberate scheming, but then again, certain LEAs do seem to honestly not care whether or not they are acting within the law.

I suspect the problems at our LEA are more to do with job losses and understaffing than anything deliberate.

My suspicion would be that they are stalling for time not to have a finalised statement before the end of the school year - that way they put off any obligation to do anything before September effectively.

I would write to them, quote the SEN Code of Practice relevant point that was mentioned above about the two weeks and insist that the provisional statement is issued on time in accordance with that. I would then suggest to them that if they fail to act on time you will put in an official complaint to the LGO about it. The LGO won't do much most likely but still worth the push anyway and probably still worth complaining to them as it does leave a better paper trail if you end up at tribunal in the long term. Making the LA look useless can not harm your arguements in my opinion!

Well the 2 weeks is now up. No proposed statement. Emails to Case Officer and Manager ignored. Called on Friday and got told they would get back to me.

How long have others waited for a proposed statement once a decision to issue one has been made?

I have read the 'must be issued in two weeks' things in a few more places since I was last on this thread, so I think you are well within your rights to put it in writing to them. It's an idea to do that anyway to be honest, as it's all part of the paper-trail. (evidence)

Our LEA insisted the two weeks was for them to produce it, not get it to us. As it happens they even missed that deadline by a day and wouldn't have done a thing about it if I hadn't called and spoken to a lovely lady who wasn't our Statementing Officer, but who realised they were potentially getting into dodgy territory - not least of all because our SO wasn't actually due in for the rest of that week. She arranged for an admin assistant to email it to me the next day, albeit without the appendices. They then put it in the post the same day, via some obscure non Royal Mail service and it took a week to arrive.

Thing is that they then told me that our 15 days response time started when they finished producing it and not when we actually received it! So we had already lost a full week of time to read, review and amend it (including meeting with the school) by the time we received it. The school was exempted from including the Easter holiday in their response time, but we weren't, so I had to return it without liaising with the professionals about a few things, because no-one was available over the holidays.

We still haven't received our second (amended) proposed statement and the deadline for the finalised version is in less than two weeks, so we're in a similar position of having to push the LEA.

Best advice I can give you is to put it in writing, as well as email to them and keep pushing.

Hmm...

Well the latest is that they are going to call me tomorrow when it is ready and I can go and collect it. Fingers crossed.