SEND families 'frustrated and helpless' - report

Parents, carers and professionals looking after young people with special educational needs are being left "frustrated and helpless", an inspection has found.

Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission said both Wirral Council and the local NHS were failing young people who needed support.

The inspectors said that despite some progress having been made, urgent action needed to be taken.

Wirral Council said some improvements had been made but that not all families were feeling the benefit yet, the Local Democracy Reporting Service reported.

The inspection in January looked at both the services provided by Wirral Council as well as the NHS Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care Board.

It came after a highly critical inspection in 2021 and a government notice issued last year over a failure to make progress.

The council has invested more money in its special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) teams, and the Department for Education described the improvements as significant.

The January inspection, published recently, said there were long-standing failings "all too frequently characterised by waiting lists, and delays and failures to identify children and young people's needs".

The inspectors said: "Children and young people bear the consequences of weak systems for education, health and care (EHC) plans.

"Furthermore, many EHC plans are rarely, if ever, updated to reflect the reviews that education settings carry out.

"Consequently, these plans no longer reflect the needs of the children and young people concerned and their needs sometimes go unmet."

Wirral Council leader Paul Stuart, a member of the Local Area SEND Partnership Board, said: "We have made progress in recent months, which has been recognised by the Department for Education.

"While we continue to work across the partnership board to make large scale improvements for SEND children and their families, we recognise that these improvements are not yet consistently being felt by families themselves."

He said there were still changes needed to improve the services and provide positive outcomes for all children and young people across Wirral.

"We have a lot of work to do, but we're committed to our young people," he said. "There are a lot of dedicated and passionate staff across the partnership working hard to continue to drive that change and I'd thank them for their commitment to our borough and our young people.

"The momentum that Wirral's Local Area SEND Partnership has already built and the pace of work will continue to ensure that families feel the benefits of these changes and the needs of all children and young people with SEND across Wirral are met – and exceeded."

Simon Banks, place director (Wirral) for NHS Cheshire and Merseyside, said a recovery plan had been endorsed to improve wait times for assessments.

He added: "Wirral is an early adopter in the North West of a new neurodiversity profiling tool that will ensure that neurodevelopmental needs are identified early and support put in place across all areas of a child or young person's life."

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