Damning report confirms what many families already know - Northants SEND provision is catastrophically failing
Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission have told leaders to act fast
By Sarah Ward
Yesterday Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission published a damning report about the state of special educational needs provision in North Northamptonshire. After an inspection earlier this year, the experts came to the conclusion that urgent action is needed by lead partners responsible for the provision; the north unitary council and the Northamptonshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) who together with the independent children’s trust commission and deliver services.
The report found:
“There are widespread and/or systemic failings leading to significant concerns about the experiences and outcomes of children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), which the local area partnership must address urgently.”
On what it was like to be a SEND child in North Northants, it said:
“Not enough is known about children and young people with SEND in North Northamptonshire. This is because they do not always have their needs accurately identified and assessed right from the start. Services are disjointed across education, health and social care. Poor information-sharing means that important knowledge of children, young people and their families is not connected across services efficiently and effectively. Professionals do not always work effectively together. As a result, some children and young people wait too long to get the help they need.”
The failings listed were many: assessments happening too late and making children’s lives harder; educational health and care plans (EHCPs) taking too long to complete and when they are finished, many are poor and don’t prescribe children the right support; long waiting times for specialist support, such as speech therapy and mental health treatment; parents having to resort to formal routes to get the correct support, adding extra pressure on families.
Positives listed included: ‘emerging green shoots’ of early help provision; nurseries happy with the specialist school team; a coordinated approach to helping children with complex needs; a well-thought of specialist school nursing team and good support for sensory impaired children.
Julie Heron’s nine-year old daughter is one of the children who is being failed. Julie took her autistic daughter out of her mainstream Corby primary last year, after the school environment made her ill. Her daughter suffered from anxiety, had night terrors and would self harm due to the sensory overload. Julie’s requests to put her distressed child on a part-time timetable were refused and so she withdrew her daughter and now teaches her at home, drastically reducing her work hours to do so.
Since then she has been fighting to get her daughter an EHCP, having to take her fight to the court, spending several thousands in the process.
Yesterday, on the same day the report came out, she learned that the authority would not be contesting her appeal and the EHCP process could start. She found out not through a personal phone call, or an email addressed to the family, but through correspondence to the court, to which she was copied in.
But she knows that this is not the end of the road, as the waits for EHCPs are long and when they do come, they often do not have the correct support and so parents have to take the council to court again.
Julie says: “I have been angry - at one point I was ill, angry. But I believed, in this country in 2024, this couldn’t happen. I genuinely believed that justice was on our side and if I complained to somebody something would happen. And it wasn’t and it didn’t.”
Julie has been so frustrated by treatment, that she has started an action group in the North of the county. Since it began just six weeks ago more than 300 parents with SEN children have signed up.
On April 6 they will be holding an event in Corby to discuss the challenges they face.
Who is in charge?
The ICB and the unitary authority hold a legal duty to provide services to children. Leadership came in for particularly heavy criticism throughout the report. Inspectors found:
“Waiting times for health services such as speech and language therapy, mental health services and access to a paediatrician are too long. Leaders have not acted effectively in order to ensure that appropriate support is available to mitigate the negative impact of these waiting times. This means some children’s and young people’s difficulties become greater while they wait to get the right support. This leads to many families finding themselves in crisis. At times, this contributes to the breakdown of school placements and leads to children and young people with SEND spending too much time out of school. Leaders recognise this and are planning a new strategy to address these concerns.”
Yesterday the ICB boss Toby Sanders and the Conservative leader of North Northamptonshire Council Jason Smithers issued a joint statement:
“We fully accept and acknowledge the findings of the Ofsted report and are sorry to all those children, young people and their families who have been let down. It is our absolute priority to ensure immediate action to drive the urgent improvements which have been highlighted.”
But sorry is not good enough for Julie Heron.
She said:
“The report says exactly what we knew - but the leaders being told by us was never enough.
“They are sorry for what? Sorry they got caught? Sorry that my nine year old is stuck at home? Sorry this is her only chance? They are sorry because someone made them say sorry.”
The North unitary is suffering from staffing issues. Its director of children’s services Anne Marie Dodds left last autumn, and NN Journal understand’s her deputy, assistant director of education, Neil Goddard has also recently handed in his notice and will join his former boss at another local authority.
The director for adult social services David Watt is currently standing in. Yesterday’s Ofsted report also points to a number of interim staff in key positions.
The two statutory bodies have been told they must put together an action plan to address the multiple problems.
Reaction
The NNC Labour group issued this statement calling for involvement in the action plan.
“The inspection findings underscore areas where our system has fallen short of meeting the needs of our most vulnerable children and young people. As representatives of the community, we recognise the urgent need for reform and improvement to ensure every child receives the support they require to thrive.
“In response, the North Northants Unitary Labour Group will do everything in our power to hold the controlling party to account for their failings over the past three years as it is clear that children and young people with SEND and other vulnerable groups are a low priority for the Tories.
“We urge the executive to establish a working group of officers and cross- party representatives to write a prioritised action plan, ensuring a collaborative approach to address the challenges outlined in the Ofsted inspection.
“Our primary focus is to collaborate closely with all stakeholders, including parents and carers, educators, and relevant authorities, to develop a comprehensive action plan. This plan will directly address the highlighted shortcomings and prioritise the implementation of robust measures to safeguard the well-being and educational attainment of children with SEND.”
Long term problems
The issues in the system are not new and have been long in the making. Way back in 2020 former senior education officer Gwyn Botterill was warning of a ‘perfect storm brewing’ in SEND provision, as the number of places needed was falling short and the costs were rising. But since then there has been a revolving door of officers. The North unitary council, which formed in 2021, has already been through two directors of children’s services.
And throughout numerous reports in the aftermath of the former county council’s collapse the lack of joined up partnership between health, local authorities and social care was pointed to as an aggravating factor as to why services were failing.
However, while pledges have been made for more joined up thinking, and comments made in public meetings about successes, the situation for children who need SEND provision in the county has been worsening.
Countywide problems
The issues facing the North of the county are being felt just as keenly in West Northants. At the full council meeting last Thursday SEND families staged a protest outside, writing down the names of the children being failed.
Parent and action group co-founder Lauren Bunting gave an emotional speech in which she said :
“Parents and children [are] in crisis, children out of education for years at a time and pleas for help ignored, or worse, met with safeguarding allegations, parent blame or fines for not attending school.
“We have a SEND strategy that contains no real strategy and isn’t being followed anyway. That’s WNC (West Northamptonshire Council) choosing to leave a child at home or in an unsuitable school for a year, deeming them undeserving of education.”
Lauren shared the experience of her seven-year-old daughter, who has not been able to start school due to a lack of provisions in the county.
“Today we appeal to you to stand up for some of the most vulnerable children in West Northants.
“Some of you know how deep this crisis is and yet do nothing, complicit in your silence. Some of you show care and concern, but perhaps have not fully grasped the extent and severity of this very complex issue.
“We ask you to do more- to learn the reality of what is happening to local disabled children, accept that it’s not all about funding, it’s not all due to a national crisis and that a new special school isn’t going to fix everything.
“Challenge the poor excuses given by officers and cabinet members and not just accept that every new scheme or strategy put forward is a miracle solution.
“We ask you to do what you were elected to do- to represent the people of West Northants, even when they don’t have a voice and even when it isn’t easy.”
Cllr Fiona Baker, cabinet member for children, families, skills and education at WNC said:
“As a Council and as a partnership we have been open in recognising the challenges we face in terms of a significant shortfall of provision for SEND places across West Northants and overdue education, health and care needs assessments and the impact this is having on our children, young people and their families.
“We know the partnership has not delivered the services it should, and we are working extremely hard to put in solutions for this, including our plans to create an additional 600 places for children and young people with SEND by Autumn 2025 which we are on track to complete.
“We know this isn’t an instant solution and it will take time to embed, however these issues are unfortunately not a quick fix and are challenges being felt by local authorities across the country.
“We have also invested and continue to do so, in additional resources, such as additional EPs to address our timeliness, but we have been open that this will take time to address the issues which we have in ensuring children with SEN receive the best support possible and in a timely manner. We know we are not there yet, but we are doing all we can to improve this.”
Ofsted has just carried out a two week inspection of SEND services in the West.
Additional reporting by Nadia Lincoln, Local democracy reporter
This is not a story that directly impacts me (no kids) so I do not have a dog in the fight as it were, but this speaks to a wider and worrying issue of mismanagement by the local authority. A local authority with many of the same people at the helm when NCC went bust.
I worked indirectly for NCC in 2013 when they set up Olympus Care Services as a limited company to circumvent oversight and spending for social care services and we can see how well that ended.
The budgets are tight and there is not a lot of wiggle room to make improvements, but the current status quo won't do with so much wastage and poor leadership failing to steer the ship
I think we all need to be mindful of this next month when local elections come about and actually vote in people who will take more control and make better decisions to avoid hitting headlines like this.
Unfortunately the public seem to be unwilling to vote these people off the councils.
One can only hope that they feel sufficiently embarrassed to resign but as Tories they are determined to cling on to power unless a seat in the House of Lords beckons.