Thousands of parents in East forced to take legal action to win SEND education for children

More than a quarter of parents of children with special educational needs in the East of England have been forced to take legal action in order to win the right provision, new ITV News research reveals.

Some have had to fork out up to £50,000 in order to win the right support for their child, while others are still waiting for their children to be assessed.

They are among the results of exclusive research carried out by ITV News, which show that in the Anglia region more than 5,000 children are waiting to be assessed, and 1,000 are waiting for a place in school. 

It comes as ITV News puts a Spotlight on SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) across news regions in its network - on TV, online, on ITVX and social media.

ITV News is showcasing the experiences of parents who have been forced to wait for years for the most basic provision, pushed to the brink of mental and financial collapse.

Of those parents that used the legal system, 43% spent between £1,000 and £5,000 on legal fees. Nearly a third of parents who used the legal system had to spend between £5,000 and £50,000 on legal costs.

Of the parents that went down the legal route, almost half revealed they paid for these costs by using their savings, while just over a quarter (24%) said they took loans out with banks and/or online lenders. 

In an exclusive poll of parents, a litany of other issues were highlighted.

One in four parents said they did not feel their child received everything they were entitled to in their education, health and care plan (EHCP).

NHS England says a child or young person has special educational needs and disabilities if they have a learning difficulty or disability that means they need special health and education support in school. If they do, an application can be made for an education, health and care plan (EHCP) to their local council.

Every parent applying for such a plan, which is a legally binding document setting out the provision a child with SEND requires, can appeal against the outcome of that process.

This could be instances where the local authority has decided not to offer extra provision, or where there is a disagreement about the offered provision - such as a child with SEND being given a mainstream school place.

In the Anglia region, the number of appeals rose by at least 70% from 1,324 to 2,252 between the years of 2021-2023.

Parents unsatisfied with the outcome of an appeal can take their case to tribunal - a legal hearing in front of a judge - which will decide if they are entitled to SEND provision.

Of the 565 tribunals which took place in 2023, councils won just 18%.

And parents told ITV News Anglia that the constant fight to win the right to support for their children was taking a toll on their mental health and that of their children.

Holly Lockwood-Waduge from Chelmsford, whose two daughters are both autistic, made an application for an EHCP back in December 2022.

It took 18 months to get a first draft. It should take five.

Ms Lockwood-Waduge said: “We didn’t have to be without education.

"If she had had that EHCP process agreed when it was meant to be, within the 20-week scale, she would potentially be in a mainstream school with the right support or in a specialist education place with the right support.

"But she has just been left and her mental state potentially could have been affected. Everything is just a knock on effect to each other, the diagnosis, the EHCP waiting times everything.

“Us as parents, we’re just fighting constantly to get heard and we’re exhausted.

"It is just emotionally draining, physically draining and then it just gets to a point where you can’t function anymore but then demand is still there from everyday life, so we still have to hold down jobs and go to work while also trying to support our children that sometimes can’t go to school.”

Her nine-year-old Elyia attends a non-mainstream school, while Amaya, six, is at school three days a week with one-to-one support - but they all live with the worry it will not last.

“I don’t think there is necessarily one person that we can blame or one organisation that we can blame," she said.

"It’s a resource that’s so underfunded. It’s such a crisis... If our child has to go into school but yet their needs can’t be met in school but they still have to legally attend that school, how can we expect them to thrive? We can’t, yet that expectation is there.”

Essex County Council said it is allocating more than £1m to recruit agency educational psychologists to help address the current assessment backlog.

A further £2.9m is being allocated to deliver "additional assistance" within the local SEND system.

Helen Lincoln, executive director for children, families and education at the council, said: “We are seizing different opportunities to improve education, health and care needs assessment wait times, and the experience of families in Essex.

"Our aim is to do this as quickly as possible, without compromising on the quality of the service offered to families.

“The additional assistance plan is one part of our wider improvement work and it is important we don’t make changes in isolation. We recognise there are different areas that need to be addressed across the system.

“We understand the effect that long wait times can have on families but hope the changes we are making will go some way in providing reassurance that SEND improvements remain a priority for the council.”

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