Two brothers with special educational needs were left without the speech and language therapy they were legally entitled to for more than a year – revealing wider failures in Buckinghamshire.
Between September 2023 and December 2024, one boy missed out on almost all of the occupational therapy he was entitled to, and more than half the speech and language therapy.
His brother also went without his speech and language therapy – and the council ‘repeatedly delayed’ updating his plan, meaning his mother ‘had no legal right to challenge the level of support he was getting.’
An investigation by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman found up to 400 other children were also potentially affected.
This was because the problems were partly due to the council's therapy provider ending its contract with a sub-contractor in early 2024.
The investigation found the council ‘failed to properly consider the impact’ of withdrawing the contract, had ‘no back-up plan’ and failed to ‘step in to ensure those children still got the help they were owed quickly enough.’
Mrs Amerdeep Clarke from the ombudsman, said: "These are not simply cases of two children falling between the cracks of an overstretched service.
“The council made wholesale changes to the way it provided support without ensuring it could meet the needs of these children and many others.
“Buckinghamshire Council did not do enough when it identified clear warning signs that the therapy hundreds of children and young people needed could not be delivered at the agreed level.”
Buckinghamshire Council said it ‘fully accepts’ the findings and says it has apologised to the mother of the two children.
It has agreed to pay ‘a symbolic’ £1,000 to recognise what has gone wrong.
Bucks council also agreed to create a plan to show how it will address any shortfall in the needs of children and young people whose needs are not currently being met through the therapy service.
Carl Jackson, cabinet member for education and children’s services, said: “We are sorry we let these children down in 2023/24 and fell short of our usual standards and legal duties.
“Our priority now is to ensure this failing is not repeated.”
He stressed that the ‘up to 400 children’ the ombudsman mentioned referred to the cohort size covered by the sub‑contracted service – not the number of children experiencing a delay.
“We continue to face high demand for our [special needs] services, but we are successfully delivering improvements,” he said.
Jenny Ricketts, chief nurse of Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, said:
“We take the ombudsman’s findings extremely seriously and are deeply sorry that the children and their family did not receive the support they were entitled to.
“This is not the standard of care we strive to deliver.
“We are already strengthening our processes and working closely with partners to ensure children and young people with [special educational needs] receive timely, consistent and high-quality support.
Our teams are committed to learning from this and making the improvements needed so families can have full confidence in the services we provide.”
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