A family has been paid over £7,000 after an autistic child missed school for over a year. A council was told to apologise and pay compensation after failing to find a school for the boy.
Worcestershire County Council failed to find an appropriate school for the child for 15 months. The boy, who also has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), was told by his school that it was no longer able to meet his needs.
The local government ombudsman said the council must pay £7,500 to the unnamed family for its failings and for the distress caused. A report by the ombudsman said the boy was issued with an education, health and care plan (EHCP) by the county council in June 2020 which included individual support and specific social skills teaching and anxiety management.
A yearly review resulted in the school marking the child, who was in his GCSE year, as ‘medically unfit to attend’ because it triggered his anxiety and led to ‘aggressive outbursts’. The unidentified school and the boy’s parents had agreed he needed to move as his complex needs could no longer be met.
But the county council ignored the review and failed to amend his EHCP. The mum contacted the council in a bid to arrange schooling for her son but after finally finding a tutor in November 2021, it was cancelled at the last minute.
The council should have intervened and found a school in June 2021 but did not find an alternative until the following September. The mum eventually complained to the council in April 2022 saying she had been ignored and the authority had not sorted out a new school for her son or changed his EHCP.
The ombudsman said that while the council “accepted its shortcomings” in the mum’s complaint, it did not respond in the way it should have done. The council had refused to escalate the mum’s complaint saying it had offered an explanation for the failure to find a school and for failing to stop the boy from being removed from the school’s roll without first finding an alternative school.
Tina Russell, director of children’s services at Worcestershire County Council, said: “We take all complaints and LGO investigations and findings very seriously. We have accepted the recommendations of this investigation and have apologised to the family.
“We continue to work with education providers and parent carers not only to address immediate need but to look at longer-term planning to improve and develop our arrangements to support children, who are unable to access education and ensure we have education provision that can meet their needs.”
