Tag Archives: EHCP

PARENTS SEND THEIR REGARDS

REWARDING FAILURE
Cash for carnage

Parents of Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) kids, royally SHAFTED by useless council social care boss Jacqui “Village” Jensen and her merry-go-round of clueless and unaccountable interim education chiefs on BIG MONEY were out in force at the Counts Louse on Tuesday 2 October. This was after OFSTED inspectors put out a call to parents to pop in and tell them what they think of SEND provision in Bristol as part of their statutory inspection of the Bristol City Council’s SEND disaster area.

Terms such as “CARNAGE” and “BLOODBATH” were liberally supplied to The BRISTOLIAN to describe the scenes as around 40 stressed and disgusted parents queued up to BLAST Village’s useless department that has failed to produce 98 PER CENT of their Education, Health and Social Care Plan (EHCP) on time. Without one of these plans many of the city’s most vulnerable children are UNABLE to access any kind of education in the city and children have been stranded at home with some parents having to give up work to care for and educate their kids themselves.

Village was clearly expecting trouble as she was spotted, with a host of her social and education ‘top guns’ fawning over her, loitering near the parents as they waited to meet the Ofsted inspectors. One parent commented to us that highly paid council bosses aimlessly hanging about at the Council House feigning concern, “PERFECTLY SYMBOLISED THE COUNCIL’S RESPONSE TO THEIR ONGOING SEND CRISIS“.

But the big question is, when the abysmal OFSTED report arrives, will Jensen do the decent thing and do us all a favour and agree to aimlessly hang about at home on her own time on a permanent basis?

STUBBY COVERS ARSE

STUBBY
Stubby enjoying a tall story …

The latest interim consultant ON AN UNDISCLOSED DAY RATE to run Bristol City Council’s half-arsed, partially legal education service is cheery Bath resident, Alan “Stubby” Stubbersfield. Like most jobbing consultants, Stubby’s main concern, rather than the education of our children, is to cover the arses of any fellow consultants so that they can keep their lucrative gravy train on the rails for a few more years yet.

Stubby was recently CONFRONTED at Bristol Schools Forum meeting about the relationship between a gormless predecessor’s decision to CUT payments to educational psychologists and the current inability – ON STUBBY’S WATCH – of the council to complete Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) for children with special educational needs.

The cuts were large too. Spend on educational psychologists in 2016 – 17 was £1,159,000, by 2018 – 19 it was £797,000. So, at present, the EHCP process, which should take 20 weeks is taking 40 – 50 WEEKS and without an EHCP a child is deprived of any support in school and – in some cases – even a school to attend.

Stubby’s response was cheerily oblique. “If you look at the attempts to save High Needs Block spend on psychologists … I think probably AN UNFORESEEN CONSEQUENCE of that is in terms of that team’s ability to turn around assessments in a timely manner,” he blandly explained

Exactly what kind of fucking moron is it that can’t foresee that IF YOU CUT STAFF FUNDING, YOU CUT STAFF AND YOU’LL GET LESS WORK DONE? And why would anyone pay this level of moron a six-figure sum of council taxpayers’ money? Stubby, of course, sees it differently and AVOIDS BLAMING HIS INTERIM PREDECESSOR AT ALL COSTS

“I think there’s a question there about the extent to which we are appropriately supporting the ability of the Local Authority through its Education Psychology service to do what’s necessary,” he explained as if it’s all our fault.

There’s another question here too. Why are we paying interim consultant after interim
consultant stupid money for stupid decisions they’re never around to account for.