EOTAS & personal budget

[RainyReadingDay]

DS (13) is autistic. He has an EHCP, after a considerable battle with LA. We were home educating him but wanted him to go to special school (his choice too).

The LA has refused him a place and we are deciding whether to appeal this.

In the meantime they have allocated a personal budget (another battle) which will barely cover 3-4 hours tuition a week and nothing else.

What do we do now? We were on the point of complaining to the Local Government Ombudsman (on advice of SENDIASS) but now we have the EHCP finally (albeit wrong in several places) and offer of small personal budget that won't cover DS's education and any other educational activities.

Our LA is incompetent and they have lied to us so many times and broken the law, delaying the issue of his EHCP by over six months. We have complained so many times and we get nowhere, apart from the occasional angry email pushing back at us.

Any advice on where to go from here would be really appreciated. Thank you.

Do appeal. Is the SS wholly independent?


Is it EOTAS or are you still EHE with a PB?


If the former, is s.F detailed, specified and quantified? If not, unfortunately any PB isn’t going to be enough because s.F isn’t worth the paper it is written on. In this case you need to appeal to make it watertight. If it is, ask the LA’s Director of Children’s Services how the LA intend to provide the provision in s.F as the PB is not enough. Remind them they still have a legal duty to ensure s.F is provided and if they fail to deliver you will be forced to begin judicial review proceedings.

If the latter you need to inform them you are no longer EHE and they must make provision to ensure the s.F is provided.


delaying the issue of his EHCP by over six months.

For future reference you could have gone down the judicial review route. Often the threat to the Director of Children’s Services works. If it doesn’t usually a pre-action letter does - SOSSEN are reasonably priced. Few get 5 an actual hearing.

Thank you. That's really helpful. I wish I'd known about Judicial Review to threaten them with.

SENDIASS have been very helpful here. They are furious about the way we've been treated and are fully backing us up. I had a lengthy chat with them about the way forward today and feel a bit clearer headed about it all. Our LA is awful.

Be careful with SENDIASS. Some are helpful, but many aren’t and they should have advised you to go down the JR route. IPSEA and SOSSEN are better.

I have used IPSEA quite a bit for their model letters etc. Didn't know about SOSSEN but will have a look at them too.

I think our SENDIASS is reasonably good, despite the JR matter, compared with the one we had contact with when we lived in a different county. She was useless, and just kept agreeing with the LA officers' bad decisions. Her advice was that we just accept their useless offer. We could see she was never going to help us.

I will be on my guard from now on and look at other advice too.