SEND families report councils to police over EHCP disputes, Digi Mart USA News (United Kingdom): Desperate parents and carers of children with special educational needs are reporting council officials to the police over what they claim is a failure to provide the support their children are legally entitled to receive.
At least ten families have made reports to police, according to The i Paper, accusing officials of misconduct in public office on the grounds that they are deliberately withholding support. The response from police is mixed.
Some families have been issued crime reference numbers, while other complaints are understood to be under active investigation. Others have been told their complaints are a civil matter and directed to Citizens Advice, and some have received no response.
MP Chris Coghlan, who is campaigning on SEND, said the reports show how frustrated some families have become at not getting the help they are entitled to. Under law, parents or schools can ask a local authority to carry out an assessment for special educational needs.
Once a child is assessed as having SEND, the council must create an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP), a legally binding document.
Councils are under mounting financial pressure as demand for specialist support rises. The Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that debts linked to SEND spending could reach £14bn by 2029, leaving local authorities under growing pressure to ration provision.
Coghlan pointed to the fact that parents won 99 per cent of SEND tribunal appeals decided in 2024-25 as evidence of the scale of disputes between families and local authorities.
The Liberal Democrat MP said he has received more than 1,200 testimonies from families alleging serious failings by councils, and claimed around 200 of those accounts relate to suicide. The i Paper said it had independently identified nine cases in which children and young people with SEND died by suicide and coroners subsequently issued formal warnings about failures in the support they received.
These Prevention of Future Deaths reports highlighted concerns involving schools, local authorities and NHS mental health services.
The Government is preparing to overhaul SEND rules so that more children are taught in mainstream schools, with EHCPs reserved for children with the most complex needs. Opponents say this is the wrong approach.
Coghlan is due to speak at the launch of the SEND Matters Coalition in Parliament, a cross-party campaign calling on ministers to rethink the proposed reforms. Campaigners fear the changes could weaken families’ legal protections and leave children without enforceable rights to support.
Coghlan told The i Paper: “There is an epidemic of avoidable child suicide and zero accountability.” Last week, he used a question to the Prime Minister to highlight the case of 13-year-old Eivie White, from Maidstone, Kent, who took her own life in March 2023 after years of alleged failures by Kent County Council to provide appropriate support for her autism.
Despite having an EHCP, her family say she was denied the specialist provision she needed, bullied at school and placed in isolation. The council also opposed a move to a specialist school.
Kent County Council has previously said it “deeply regrets” any occasion where services and support have not met the expected standards. It said a 2022 inspection identified areas where improvements were needed and that it had worked to address them.
According to the Crown Prosecution Service, misconduct in public office, which carries a life sentence, “concerns serious wilful abuse or neglect of the power or responsibilities of the public office held,” and there must be a direct link between the misconduct and an abuse of those powers or responsibilities. Coghlan believes the offence could apply where officials knowingly and deliberately withhold support that children are legally entitled to, rather than where there is simply poor decision-making or negligence.
Speaking to LBC on Tuesday, Education Secretary Lucy Powell acknowledged that the SEND system is failing children and families. She said the Government’s reforms are designed to provide support much earlier, without children needing a formal diagnosis to access help, and that new specialists, including educational psychologists and speech and language therapists, are already being deployed in schools.
Powell described the reforms as a “once in a generation” opportunity to overhaul the system.
Supporting the campaign, impressionist Rory Bremner, who has ADHD, told The i Paper: “Not all minds fit our education system. We mustn’t fail these children because they are different.
What makes them different can also make them great.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We are taking a zero-tolerance approach to local authorities failing families and will not hesitate to intervene if they do not meet the clear expectations we have set out for them.”
The Government’s response to its consultation on the proposed changes is awaited, with legislation expected in 2027.
