Cllr Madeeha Asim apologises for Hounslow Council’s failure to provide for child with complex educational needs

Hounslow accepts responsibility for its failure in the case of ‘Y’, an autistic primary school age child whose needs were not supported as they should have been

Hounslow’s new Cabinet Member for Children, Cllr Madeeha Asim, made a fulsome apology at Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting (14 July) for the Council’s failure to provide an autistic primary school aged girl with the support she needed for her complex educational needs.

The Council was criticised by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman in April for its failure to provide the girl, referred to in the report as ‘Y’, with the care she needed.

READ ALSO: Social care watchdog slams Hounslow Council for losing oversight of vulnerable children

Every council in the country should take note of this case

Amerdeep Clarke

Ombudsman Amerdeep Clarke said every council in the country should take note of this case, and make sure they had the correct procedures in place.

The girl’s parents moved her out of a school where she was happy to try and access the care she needed, on the Council’s advice, only to find the second school could not meet her needs either.

By the time they realised this, her place at the first school had been given to someone else.

Though she lives in Hounslow, her first school was across the border in another borough. The Council agreed in principle to pay for speech and language therapy and for occupational therapy, but did not provide it in practice:

‘The parents were told by the Council that the services from the area where Y lived could not support her and she was not eligible for support from the services local to School 1’.

The Ombudsman told the Council it must recognise it had responsibility to support Y whether she went to school in the borough or not.

The Council accepts the Ombudsman’s criticisms and has acted on them, says Cabinet Member for Children

Cllr Madeeha Asim

Speaking about the case in Cabinet, Cllr Madeeha Asim said:

“I want to begin by apologising to the child and her family.

“While there were several reasons why the provision they were entitled to were not delivered, that does not change our responsibility or our duty to ensure that the provisions set out in an Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plan is delivered”.

The Member for Children and Young Futures, who was not in post when all this happened, told colleagues the Council had accepted the Ombudsman’s findings, remedies and recommendations in full and had acted on them.

They have apologised to the family and paid them compensation of £1,200 to recognise Y had lost six months of language and occupational thearapy, which had set her back, and £500 in recognition of the distress this had caused.

Council’s duty to provide for an Education, Health and Care Plan “cannot be delegated”

“The key message is clear”, she continued.

“The Council’s duty to secure the provision set out in an Education, Health and Care Plan cannot be delegated.

“Even where services are delivered by schools or by providers outside the borough, responsbility remains with us”.

Her department had already applied the learning  from this case and were taking concrete action, she said, as required by the Ombudsman’s report, to strengthen the service and demonstrate Hounslow’s commitment to Special Educational Needs and Disbilities (SEND) provision.

“We are improving oversight, strengthening record-keeping, making decision making more timely and accurate, and improving communication with parents and carers”.

The improvements would help identify concerns earlier and give parents greater confidence in the service the Council provided, she added.

“As a mother of two children being schooled in the borough, I care deeply about our education system and I am committed to ensuring every child receives the support they need”.

She said she hoped families would be reassured by the action they had taken, that the Council had “listened, learned, and are taking meaningful action”.