A mother has been given a £13,200 payout after Cambridgeshire County Council failed to provide her son with the specialist support he needed.
The mum spent years raising her concerns to the authority, which has apologised and said it has taken on board the lessons it needs to learn.
A complaint was lodged with the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman by the mum, who claimed the council had not provided her son with the support set out in his Education, Health and Care Plan (EHC Plan), a legal document.
Once a council has completed an EHC Plan for a child, it has a legal duty to deliver the educational and social care provision in it.
A report published by the Ombudsman said the mum, referred to as Mrs X, objected to the council’s choice of secondary school for her son, referred to as Y, in 2018.
The son had stopped attending school in 2018 and the council began providing 10 hours a week of home tuition for the boy in 2020.
Mrs X’s appeal over the choice of school was dismissed at a tribunal in 2020, which recommended the council put in place a transition plan so that the boy could move from home tuition to the school.
This plan was never put in place and the boy continued to be tutored at home.
Mrs X complained in 2023 that the authority had failed to support the transition or deliver other specialist support set out in the EHC Plan. His mum paid out more than £4,000 to organise therapy from a clinical psychologist.
Mrs X also complained about delays to reviewing the support her son needed and claimed there had been no consideration of what was required to prepare him for adulthood.
The council accepted it was at fault for failing to provide all of the support, complete a transition plan, complete an early annual review or prepare him for adulthood.
The Ombudsman said Y had been receiving something “comparable to full-time education” through the one-to-one tuition arranged by the council but noted other support and therapy, which would have been provided had he gone to school, was not provided. The Ombudsman said Y’s education was “not meeting the same standard it should have been”.
Recognising the council had accepted its faults and had appointed a member of staff to support Y with preparation for adulthood, the Ombudsman told the authority to pay £750 to Mrs X in recognition of the “avoidable distress”, £4,050 to reimburse her for clinical psychologist sessions and £8,400 for the missed educational provision.
A council spokesperson said: “We accept the Ombudsman’s findings and have apologised to the complainant for failure to provide provision detailed in the EHC Plan and for the delays in the annual review and transition process.
“We have complied with the recommendations from the Ombudsman.
“We currently maintain more than 7,500 EHC Plans and have seen a 30 per cent increase in related assessment requests over the last year.
“Incidents such as this are rare, but we have taken on board the lessons we have learned to minimise the risk of anything similar happening again.”
