An invitation for 1 (no plus 1) to a “bus crash” of a review

By Brian Leveson
•
10 Oct, 2021
•

550 children (approx.) get assistance from Haringey special educational needs transport service ‘SEN Transport’ and after a ‘car crash’ of a start to the new school term 1 parent (and only one parent) has been invited to contribute to the learning review of the service failure

You may be aware from our last SEND Newsletter published here that there will will be leading an informal learning review to explore the key events that led to significant numbers of children with SEND not being provided with transport to their place of learning at the start of term. Please find attached the scope for the review which provides more detail of how this review will operate.

I would like to invite one of you to contribute to this review on behalf of the Parent Carer Forum. The review will identify key learning and influence our planning and delivery model, moving forward. To support the review, I have attached a template that I have asked stakeholders to complete regarding their view about what happened, which can be from their own perspective or representing a wider view. This will then inform key lines of enquiry which will be discussed with us as a stakeholder group at a meeting on Tuesday 16th November from 1:30 – 4:30pm. Following this, I will pull together a report which will identify learning and recommendations for implementation to improve practice and make sure we do not have a situation like this again.

If one of you would like to become a part of the review, can you please let me know so I can extend an invitation to you. Can you also please complete this template.

I know that there may be more than one you who would like to be part of the learning review. However, I want to keep the size of the group small so we can be focused on developing our plan swiftly, and you will be able to represent wider views.

I do hope that one of you will be able to support this work. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you would like to discuss things further.

It's quite simple...

No consideration whatsoever was given to families in this service redesign and its implementation

•No coproduction,

•No consultation

•No dummy run

•Imposed upon us and

•No one cares about the impacts

•Tokenistic involvement in the ‘review’

Template questions from the service

1.What do you understand the process to be for arranging SEN school transport each academic year?

2.From your perspective, what happened? (provide a chronology of events)

3.What was the impact of this?

4.How did you respond?

5.What do you believe went wrong/ was responsible for the failures?

6.What ideas and suggestions do you have that may prevent this incident from happening again?

7.Any other comments?

•

We say ...

1.Applications should now roll over year after the abolition of the disastrous annual application form.

2.Communications were late, data breaches

3.We did not know if we were to have transport nor the appropriate escort; concern that our data has been breached and that Haringey SEN dismiss risks, despite having previously leaked emails and we suffered harassment as a consequence

4.Informed Haringey and wrote a blog for transparency

5.The Assistant Director is the officer with this in their remit

6.Involve parents fully, not in a tokenistic ‘we can only have one parent’ way

7.You are limiting parent involvement to a PCF forum that is not yet set up

•

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