Bristol City Council and the city’s schools must improve how they communicate with parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) to address a “clear lack of trust” that has developed.
That recommendation is among nine made by cross-party scrutiny councillors to improve the local SEND offer based on evidence gathered from parents and carers, national policy specialists, and education practitioners at City Hall on February 3.
The “SEND evidence day” followed a damning report from Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in December last year which found Bristol offers ‘disturbingly poor’ care to its most vulnerable children and young people.
One of the watchdogs’ biggest criticisms of the council was the “extensive delays” in producing education and health care (EHC) plans, which decide what extra support SEND pupils get in class.
Parents’ continuing lack of trust in the council and schools was made abundantly clear on February 27, when Bristol mums lined up to tell members of the council’s people scrutiny commission of the ongoing difficulties they experience getting SEND support for their children.
Gail Brown said she had appealed the council’s revised EHC plan for her four-year-old, which she claimed was issued nearly five months’ late and offered an unqualified teaching assistant to provide speech and language support in place of a professional therapist.
Jen Smith claimed her son, who should be in Year 8, has not attended school since November last year when he was unfairly excluded after the school failed to put in place the support stipulated in his EHC plan.
In response, commission chair Claire Hiscott read out a statement from the unnamed school saying it did “not recognise” the allegations.
Cllr Hiscott went on to share the recommendations from the commission and a report from the SEND evidence day.
The evidence day identified four key issues with the council’s EHC plan performance and a raft of remedies to address them.
Cllr Hiscott said: “We felt that the key issues that came out very clearly were around the culture and trust: the culture of the council and the team.
“It’s been very clear that there’s a lack of trust between families and service providers and that that was something that was definitely going to be worked on.
“When it comes to funding and capacity, need has really been growing and our capacity has not adjusted to that enough.
“And the other issue was quality, and I think we had some good discussions about what a good EHCP looks like.
“And when it comes to meaningful partnership working, I think it was very clear that putting together an EHCP means bringing together quite a lot of people.”
The recommendations to address those issues included producing a “communication and engagement plan”, simplifying the EHC plan process, better training for council and school staff involved in the process, and closer working with other local authorities, the independent sector, and universities.
It was also suggested the recommendations should be considered by the council’s executive and senior officers, and taken into account in the local authority’s formal response to the watchdog report.
The commission ratified the recommendations with minor tweaks.
The council has until March 23 to submit a “written statement of action” to Ofsted and the CQC.
The statement will be produced jointly with the NHS clinical commissioning group (CCG) for Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire.
