At IPSEA, we are dedicated to upholding the rights of children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). Our experienced policy team works to challenge policy at a local level to ensure local authorities’ policies comply with the law.  

By closely monitoring trends and analysing evidence obtained from our free advice and support services for parents and carers, we identify instances where local authorities are implementing policies that breach the law. We actively engage with local authorities to challenge these, aiming to educate and influence their policies and provisions through our in-depth knowledge of the legal framework. We can’t always publicise this work, but some recent examples of successful interventions include: 

• We threatened judicial review against a local authority (LA) when they unreasonably refused to provide home-to-school transport for a disabled child. The child was getting to school by bus, but his medical condition had worsened over recent years and he now found the bus journey so exhausting that he was often sick by the time he got to school. The local authority said that the boy should move to attend a school closer to his home, even though he was attending the nearest school which was wheelchair-accessible. After the threat of legal action, the LA reversed their decision and agreed to provide a taxi to transport him to school. 

• A local authority had issued guidance to schools suggesting that it was acceptable to place a child on a ‘part-time timetable’ to deal with challenging behaviour. This is not lawful, and would in fact amount to an informal exclusion from school. It feeds into a culture where children with SEN are 6 times more likely to be excluded from school than their non-SEN peers. IPSEA challenged the legality of this guidance, and after correspondence with our legal team, the local authority withdrew the guidance and acknowledged it had not been a correct reflection of the law. 

• For children or young people with SEN to access support through an Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan, they must first undergo an EHC needs assessment. One local authority had put in place a policy imposing criteria for qualifying for an EHC needs assessment which were far above those set out in the law, meaning that children and young people legitimately entitled to such an assessment were being denied it. Following correspondence with IPSEA’s legal team, the unlawful policy was withdrawn.

These are just some of the ways we influence SEND policy and protect, promote and uphold the rights of children and young people with SEND. If you want to find out more about our policy work and how you can play a part in what we do, register for our regular email updates.  Sign up here