Bucks mums paid for special needs delays amid shortage of psychologists

One of the women received an apology and £550 in compensation from Buckinghamshire Council for delays.

Known only as Mrs X, she said the authority failed to arrange an educational psychologist assessment for her child Y six months after agreeing to one.

The council accepted it had delayed completing Y’s needs assessment, which would have helped decide whether the child needed an education, health and care plan (EHCP).

EHCPS are legal documents setting out the extra support children and young people with special educational needs (SEN) need in their educational setting.

The council apologised to Mrs X and said the delay was caused by a shortage of educational psychologists (EPs) – which is a national problem.

Mrs X said the delay harmed her child’s education and caused the family ‘avoidable distress’, according to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, which upheld her complaint.

The watchdog, which investigates complaints against local authorities, said the mum wanted the council to ‘urgently issue’ the EHCP and ‘improve response times by hiring more staff’.

Besides the £550 payout, the council also agreed to pay Mrs X £100 per month until it issued an appealable decision.

In another, separate case, the council recently paid another mum £150 over her ‘frustration’ caused by EHCP delays.

It also agreed to pay the woman, anonymised as Mrs X, £100 for each month of delay until it either refused or agreed to make a plan.

In that case, the mum only secured an assessment for her child after she appealed the authority’s decision to refuse her.

If the council had decided to issue an EHCP, it should have done so by October 23 – week 20 of the process.

The council accepted it took too long to complete the process due to a shortage of educational psychologists.

The Ombudsman’s assessment of this second case read: “This is service failure. This has caused Mrs X frustration and distress.”

In a third, separate case, the council offered to make a ‘symbolic payment’ of £250 after failing to provide speech and language therapy to a child.

This would have been to compensate the ‘upset’ and ‘distress’ caused to the child and the mother, who was anonymised as Mrs X.

But the Ombudsman said this was not enough money and asked the council to pay the parent £150 for distress and £500 for the missed therapy, which was outlined in her child’s EHCP.

The watchdog also asked the council to show how it would prevent future delays.

A Buckinghamshire Council spokesperson said: “We acknowledge that there were delays with these cases and for this we sincerely apologise.

“We accept the findings of the Ombudsman and will take the learnings forward.”