Council issues apology and invests £1m - as founder of SEND organisation says Derbyshire children ‘let down’ by EHCP delays

Sunshine Support, a Derbyshire based special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) organisation, which provides support to families across the UK, has been overwhelmed with SEND enquiries - with a 300% increase in September.

This comes following Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) delays in Derbyshire last year. An EHC plan lays out what provision will be provided to a child with special educational needs and the local authority is required, by law, to provide these plans within 20 weeks. However, data shows that from February 2022 to May 2023, a third of these were not completed on time in Derbyshire.

Commenting on the EHCP delays, Chrissa Wadlow, founder of Sunshine Support and a mum of four, said: “Children are being let down in Derbyshire and it is absolutely appalling. Sadly, it is not only here that has the problem – this is happening nationally across the country, and it is our young people who are paying the price. They are being failed.

“It is a legal requirement that children get an education, and it is those who should be enforcing this that are preventing it. It causes families undue heartache and stress over something that is a basic human right.

“We have parents, in Derbyshire – and across the UK - who have stories to share but they’re all equally terrified that it will impact on them negatively. They really are scared.”

Following the delays, Derbyshire County Council has invested heavily to improve the service and after being approached by the Derbyshire Times has issued an apology to parents and children affected.

A Derbyshire County Council spokesperson said: “We’re investing heavily in improving performance on Education Health and Care Plans and have brought in extra temporary staff to help us manage the significant increase in demand for plans and the assessments and advice that go along with them.

“We’ve cleared a historical backlog and have invested £1million in the service to increase capacity within our Educational Psychology and SEND teams in order to address the increase in requests which reflects a national trend where the figures have almost doubled in the past seven years and are expected to continue to rise.

“We’re also reviewing and restructuring services to manage demand in the future and are aiming to keep current and new plans within the 20-week timescale while developing our increased capacity. In addition, we’ve introduced better systems to track cases and improved our partnership working with health services and schools.

“There’s been an increase in demand for special school places and we’re working with those schools to increase the places available. Where there are delays in identifying a special school place for a child we will work with the family and the existing schools or provision to look at what alternatives can be provided.

“We are very sorry for any children, families and schools who may be negatively affected by delays and continue to work extremely hard to ensure as many of the 1,100 EHCPs currently in the process of being assessed are issued within timescale.”