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Is my child entitled to free transport to a psychiatric day unit for health care and education?
My child has ASD and anorexia. He was Sectioned under the MHA but subsequently the Section was lifted. He will be discharged from psychiatric in-patient services this week.
Going forward, he is to attend day-patient after care services for 12 weeks. This is where he will receive his health care and education between 9am-5pm. Treatment is for anorexia and therapy for ASD. School lessons are also conducted on site due to the inability for them to currently attend their mainstream school.
The day care unit is 1 hour drive from our house, requiring 4 hours driving a day, back and forth, for drop off and pick up.
Under the 117 Act or any other provision, is there a legal obligation for social services or health to provide transport to and from home and the day care?
At the moment, both social services and health are saying that it is either not their responsibility, or that they have no budget.
Patient Transport Services have also refused to help due to the unit not being on their list of addresses to deliver too.
As parents, we are unable to transport due to work commitments and requirements to care for our other children and caring for a sick parent.
Thank you.Christopher Jackson
09 Jun 2025
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Transport cost - when proving the TFL carer transport assistance, should LA calculate it as a cost to its budget or it comes off the TFL's budget? "A TfL Oyster card or Travelcard for a parent, carer or responsible adult to go with the child between home and school."
When comparing the cost of two placements, should carer's travelcard be calculated as a cost to the LA? Applications for a carer travelcard are made via the LA transport team however do the funds come from the LA budget?
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Who is responsible for the quality of commissioned provision in England (whether or not it is meeting need)?
If a AP is named and it is just meeting identified need, but the quality is poor, who would be responsible for ensuring the quality improves?
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Can you go to judicial review and to first tier tribunal?
Victoria Dean
13 Mar 2025
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(In)appropriate Local Authority attendance at the Annual Review
My daughter’s EHCP Annual Review (AR) takes place one week today. Per the norm, the LA has been invited to attend. We’d not had an indication one way or the other if they would; our LA doesn’t usually attend. Today, her college received a phone call from the caseworker saying that they would / could not attend, but their superior would (we do not know yet if this is virtual or in person).
The named person they propose was the lead and very adversarial protagonist on the LA’s behalf for a Lower Tribunal hearing (which we ‘won’), a subsequent appeal (which was also won), and then made an LA appeal to the Upper Tribunal, which we again won, which resulted in the (very successful) placement at the current college.
My questions are:
1) Is it permissible that an LA representative be substituted at this late stage and can we ask for an alternative person?
2) Can we request that the LA does not allow this person to be involved in our daughter’s AR, or indeed any aspect of her ongoing engagement with the LA SENAT?
We feel threatened and intimidated by the named person’s involvement because:
a) their extremely adversarial approach to the tribunals caused a lot of pain, distress, delays and expense – both to us, and to the public purse.
b) their various submissions and representations were found to be at best irregular, at their base level they were incorrect and manipulative, which the judge(s) concurred with (in other words, they were not faithful and truthful, but this is of course tricky territory).
c) we believe they are very prejudiced against us as a family.
d) my daughter is vulnerable and is still scarred by the tribunal process and we do not want this person to have any contact with her.
Thank you in advance for any guidance at this difficult moment, served on us at very short notice.James Doherty
24 Mar 2025
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09.3385 Do the rules preventing removal of a child’s name from the roll of a special school somehow prevent a parent from removing their child from the school?
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We were advised that our online school was EOTAS and left section I blank, we have a personal budget for school. Was this wrong?
We have had our EHCP for a year and are in the process of annual review. Might it be wise to add the virtual school to section I now?
Angie Lee-Foster
18 Apr 2025
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09.0455 Should a virtual education provider be specified in Section I?
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Can Minerva virtual academy be named in an ehcp ,?
LA are saying as cfa 2014 does not mention online schools 38(3) we cannot request it. Even though Minerva appears on the dfe get information about schools list.
The La also says that even though it is dfe approved and meets ofsteds online accreditation we cannot use it until it is added to the LA’s approved alternative providers list by which time our daughter will have missed an entire academic year (year 7)Jojo Mamoon
06 Apr 2025
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Is there any legal basis for an LA to enforce pre-defined costings onto schools spending of the notional budget?
When providing provision maps to support top-up funding requests Derbyshire County Council is requiring provision to be costed at a pre-determined amount rather than the actual cost even when the school is evidencing the cost of what they are already doing (ie from their notional budget). This means that schools are repeatedly working at a loss in relation to this- can local authorities legally do this/ or is there a legal challenge that can be made against them doing this please?