Broken SEND #7

 The Empire Strikes Back!

I am just about to head into Mediation following the LA refusing to acknowledge my son's needs in his EHCP document.  

It's completely understandable as they are saving money through delay and the small chance of success.  

Mediation is a process with guaranteed confidentiality for both parties (although what goes on behind closed doors in the Council cannot be known), and so I will be severely limited in terms of what I can report here.

But, I can tell you what I expect to happen.  And through telling the stories of the outcomes you can make your own minds up as towhether I am right or not.

For this mediation, I sort of insisted that a member of the team working on my son's case attend.  This was on the basis that the last mediation we had this didn't happen and a random regional manager attended, didn't know anything about our case, and was totally ineffective in delivering what was agreed.

The first thing that happened is that the LA proposed a date and time for mediation.  A few days before they then cancelled this leading to the mediation not completing in the required timetable.  We were then issued a Certificate called MA Certificate Part 3 which meant that the LA had failed to arrange the mediation within 30 days and that we could proceed directly to Tribunal.

However, I decided to not pursue this option and waited for the new date to be agreed.  Mediation is still the best way to proceed and to, hopefully, get the LA to accept or commission new evidence that would support improved education for our son.

I have mentioned before that my strategy is to pursue our dissatisfaction through a number of channels.  Evidence gathering through Freedom or Information requests and Subject Access Requests, complaints around the way that the Council have managed the process, and an Appeal where this falls within the statutory guidelines - i.e. the content of the EHCP in terms of Needs and Provision, extended to include health.

In doing this, I have had to keep rigidly to boundaries in my communications.  Separating the appeal from the complaint, essentially.  When the Council have responded to me with emails that ignore this separation, I have had to respond requesting that they do so. 

This separation is hugely important for three reasons:

  1. It keeps things organised which is particularly important for my ADHD brain which thrives on chaos
  2. It means that correspondence can be used in the future for creating the evidence for the Appeal.
  3. The mediation and Appeal are always looking towards the future.  They aren't interested in what people or organisations did wrong in the past, just how to deliver the best education for the young person concerned.  

So it's best to separate the complaints from the appeal.

Anyway, suffice it to say that I have been complaining a lot!  And, on the basis of emails received, have been naming officers within the Council in my complaints.  Far too often the officers hide behind terms like "It is the local authorities view" or "the local authority has considered", and I think a bit of accountability in this process is needed.

I won't offer a quote here, because of potential confidentiality issues, but I had an email from the medidation team announcing that a member of our team would attend mediation with two very curtly worded provisos.  If I were to mention the complaints or refer to anything that council staff had done during the compilation of the plan, then they would walk out of mediation.

Thankfully, as mentioned above, I was able to respond that I am well aware that mediation is a forward looking process and had no intention of transgressing these conditions. I will let you draw you own conclusions as to the intent that underlay this message.

Then, one week before medication I receive an email from the Councils Complaints team.  I can talk about this because of the separation.  The SEND team raised a complaint about my communication around the time between my learning that the County Placement Group (CPG) did not approve the education package that my son needed, and the issuing of the final amended EHCP.

I admit I wrote a lot of long and detailed emails to the SEND team at this point.  I had a lot of things to discuss with them.  And during this time I was on a strict timetable enforced by the LA - if I didn't respond they would just go ahead and issue the final plan. 

So, it was a time of intense stress, frustration and anger.  All the collaborative work we had gone through leading up to that point was dismissed with a short meeting and an email.

Because of the emotions involved, I made sure that all my emails were checked before I sent them to ensure that they were reasonable and appropriate and that the emotion was removed.  I also copied in our local councillor who has been involved for many years with the trials and tribulations of EHCPs.

So, the letter from the Complaints team starts:

I am writing to you regarding the unacceptable nature of your communications with the Children’s Services Directorate

Immediately this has me thinking "Oh no! What did I say?"  This is just a natural trigger of my RSD which is a part of my ADHD.

Then there is a sort of softer bit:

I am sorry to read the dissatisfaction you express and know there are good intentions in your approach

Which, of course, is immediatly followed by the 'however'

however the impact it is having is unreasonable and at odds with our policy of zerotolerance

Zero-tolerance?  For me that is usually reserved for bullying, harrassment, discrimination.  Stuff like that.  So, I was really triggered by this point.

Thereafter it goes on to explain what I did wrong.  Apparently I made unreasonable demands which would take the team an amount of time to deal with which would impact substantially on the work of the team and their ability to provide services to others.

So, it would appear that I didn't do anything wrong!  

I did want them to spend time reading and acting on my concerns and to, hopefully, remedy a mistake which was going to take them and us down a long, painful and costly road of complaint and appeal.  This was a problem of the Council's making and not mine.  I was trying to find a solution which, because of the nature of the CPG's involvement, meant that very complicated matters needed to be discussed, and because of the nature of the imposed deadlines, meant it had to happen very quickly.

An example of these communications and the impact of deadlines.

I sent over information from professionals' reports that I wanted including in the Plan (which is what the LA SEND team are supposed to do).  They responded stating that they couldn't find references to the source documents that I had wanted to include.  I responded asking, kindly, if they could let me know which comments they couldn't locate.  I asked again as we approached the deadline.  On the day of the deadline I had to go through each of the comments and source the references to professionals reports.  Knowing that a) they had them all, and b) the vast majority of the time I had to spend would be on sections that they already knew the references.

A word of caution.  The period between getting a draft EHCP and the LA deadline is one of immense stress.  And it is  period there council staff are generally unavailable to meet or discuss matters.

Then, just because they have a policy which says they can, the Complaints team include the threat.  If I continue to communicate in an unreasonable manner, they will place a restriction on my contact.  Whatever that means!  Are they seriously saying that they would insist on communicating directly with my son?  

Anyway, that isn't going to happen because now the Final EHCP has been released, we are in a legal process now and the stress and deadlines have all gone.

I just want to make one final point, and this is something I will be taking up with our elected members whose job is to provide oversight and scrutiny on the people who are delivering public services that we pay for through our council and income taxes.

Here are the policy statements extracted from https://documents.hants.gov.uk/hr/inclusion/Policy-on-Unacceptable-Actions-by-Customers.pdf 

  • Unreasonable demands: a demand is unreasonable when complying with it would impact substantially on our work or on the services provided to others
  • Unreasonable levels of contact: when the amount of time spent dealing with your contact impacts on our ability to deal with it or with other people’s contact; this is not the same as persistence which can be a positive advantage when pursuing a complaint

These are both entirely subjective, and therefore baseless.  How am I ever to know whether my communications will impact the work of the team?  There are many factors underlying this including staffing levels, increased demand, efficiency and effectiveness of the team.  

It is a bit like putting out speed limit signs on the roads, but not including the speed limits.

To be honest, this all seems like a bit of 'tit for tat' to me.  I have complained and now the empire has struck back with all the force of its policies, legal teams, and power behind it.

My optons now are:

  1. Ignore it and continue with the forward looking mediation and appeal
  2. Get my local councillor invovled to understand some of the tactics and behaviours of the staff of the LA
  3. Escalate to the Local Government Ombudsman (which is highly unlikely to yield anything positive)
For me, as ever, it is a matter of time and resources.  I need to expend my energies on getting the right outcomes for my son.  

I hope that this blog helps others to understand another tool in the toolbox that the Councils use.  Someone, somewhere needs to take a long look at this.  I'm just not sure that it is me right now.  

What do I expect out of mediation?  Probably very little.  I may get a bit more understanding as to why there is a shift from including health related matters from education sections to health sections. If I am really lucky we may get some additional assessments commissioned to improve the quality and timeliness of the plan. There is zero chance, in my mind, of the mediation leading directly to any changes in the plan - this only happnes when the Tribunal orders it.  So, months and months of additional work for me and the SEND team (which will affect their abilities to support other cases).

Whatever, I will be on my best behaviour and attempt to respond in a calm and productive manner.  It is ok to request a pause in the mediation process, switch off my camera and mic, and let of any steam off the record.  I am used to this as an autistic ADHD'er anyway.  Requesting a bit of time to process my thoughts, is always a useful thing to do in meetings and, I find, is always respected.

I will be quiet now for a couple of weeks as I go through the mediation and its aftermath.  





 


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