She described how she and other case workers were encouraged to make it harder for families to make their case.
This included leaving telephone numbers off emails, not replying fully to queries, and not having face-to-face meetings.
This report was raised by us and several other organisations at the most recent meeting of the Council for Disabled Children. The CDC is the umbrella body for the disabled children’s sector in the UK and we work collaboratively with them to campaign on issues around SEND.
The opinion of the members is that this practice is more widespread than one council – and this is reflected in the experiences of the families with PWS that we support.
It appears that ‘purposeful delay’ is a strategy being employed by cash-strapped councils to avoid providing SEND support to families who need it.
While we acknowledge that many SEND teams are working hard with insufficient resources to meet demand, PWSA UK strongly condemns any practice that prevents people accessing the statutory support they are entitled to.
If you believe that you are experiencing issues like this when seeking support, please contact us. We can help you navigate the SEND system and can advocate on your behalf, providing letters of support, attending meetings and tribunals, and holding councils to account.
We’re also continuing to work with the CDC to raise concerns about the SEND reforms.
A number of member organisations feel that the DfE are pushing through the SEND reforms without responding adequately to concerns raised during the consultation process.
At present, the reforms don’t take account of children who aren’t in school – shockingly, 36% of children with SEND are currently without a suitable school place, something that we see reflected in the PWS community.
The DfE has yet to respond to the whistleblower allegations but says that an investigation is ongoing.
Patsy Lecont
PWS Specialist Team Manager
