'Systemic failings' cause 'unacceptable' wait for SEND children in Sheffield to get help, says watchdog

Sheffield’s children with SEND are being failed by long delays in getting help, weak Education, Health and Care plans and spending too long in schools that can’t support them, according to a scathing report by Ofsted and the CQC.

And, as a result, “too many children” go to secondary schools that can’t support them until they are suspended, excluded, or are educated at home by their families or through costly alternative provision.

Read the report on the Ofsted website here.

One parent of an autistic child in Sheffield, Stevie Kendall, told The Star: “Every parent in this city could have written this report and more.”

Meanwhile, human rights lawyer and SEND rights advocate in Sheffield, Chrissy Meleady, said it would be a “mammoth task ahead to drag this city’s SEND provision up to acceptable standards.”

What does the report say?

The Local Area Partnership’ responsible for Sheffield’s SEND provision was inspected in March this year by the education and health care watchdogs, Ofsted and the CQC.

In the report, the only named organisations in the partnership are Sheffield City Council and NHS South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board, but it also includes Sheffield Children’s Hospital NHS Trust, Sheffield Parent Carer Forum and Learn Sheffield.

The scathing report, published on June 24, opens plainly with: “There are widespread and/or systemic failings which the local area partnership must address urgently.”

The report details how a seemingly endless and compounding list of problems in Sheffield are leading to “unacceptable” wait times for children to get the help they need.

The report reads: “Too many children and young people with SEND wait an unacceptable length of time to have their needs accurately assessed and met in Sheffield.

“The quality of EHC plans in Sheffield is systemically weak and some of the information provided in EHC plans does not meet statutory guidance.

“For example, the views of parents, carers, and children and young people are not routinely included.

“EHC plans lack meaningful content about preparation for adulthood and contributions from the child or young person. This means that their aspirations, current talents and interests are not being identified or reflected in their plans... Too many EHC plans do not identify important information such as personal budgets.

“...too many children and young people with SEND are suspended and/or excluded from secondary school in comparison to their peers. Some families choose elective home education when they feel that their child’s needs are not being met or to avoid the permanent exclusion of their child from school.”

The lengthy report points to dozens of other issues causing delays in the city.

A reoccurring theme was “poor” communication between services across the city, despite those services also knowing that wait times are critical.

The city’s children and adolescent mental health services (CAHMS) is “stifled by overly complex bureaucratic pathways” that, again, delay young people receiving assessments and treatment.

Sheffield reportedly has “too few speech and language therapists who are trained in dysphagia [swallowing problems],” and “some health services are not commissioned to provide care for children and young people aged between 16 and 18 years old.”

The cumulative experience this has on children is schools was harshly criticized: “Too many children and young people with SEND are permanently excluded in Sheffield.

“This is often the result of unmet needs. Once excluded, many children and young people have unacceptable breaks in their education, and this further disengages them from school. The work of the partnership has not had a positive impact on the quality of alternative provision [AP].

“Too many children and young people with SEND on post-16 courses do not complete their education.

“Too few children and young people are reintegrated back into schools after time in AP. They remain in AP so there is no space for further referrals when children and young people need the service.”

Sheffield’s SEND failings

The Star has repeatedly reported on the ways children with SEND and their carers have been failed in recent years.

- In February 2024, an FOI request found the city council spent £200,000 fighting parents in costly, drawn-out tribunals over EHCP plans that they insisted were correct but parents disagreed with, only for courts to side with parents 97 per cent of the time.

- The Star also revealed how special schools Holgate Meadows and Heritage Park together ran up debts of £5m in just four years following the arrival of an ‘Interim Executive Board’ in 2019. Holgate was later judged ‘inadequate’ in all areas over severe safety failings, before both school’s debts were written off with taxpayer’s money and Holgate was absorbed by Nexus MAT.

- In 2019, parents called for an independent investigation into the state of SEND provision in the city, saying they were at “breaking point” with “no one listening.”

- In 2023, Sheffield mum Jennifer Dunstan shared how she had to “teach herself law” to fight the council for over a year to prove her autistic son Rio had a right to free school meals at home. She said the stresss of a looming SEND tribunal caused her hair to fall out.

- Parents of teenagers with SEND in Sheffield hit back at a council plan to cut school transport funding by millions of pounds this year, but which have since been given the go-ahead.

- In February 2025, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman upheld a complaint after ruling the council failed to secure speech and language therapy for a young girl, for which SCC agreed to apologise, pay almost £1,000 and improve services.

- And the council’s own strategic director of children’s services, Meredith Teasdale-Dixon, wrote a report this year stating how the number of referrals for Sheffield children to neurodiversity services has increased threefold in five years, and called for an overhaul of the city’s systems.

What is being done to fix it?

The report said the Local Area Partnership has produced an “ambitious” plan for change in a so-called ‘SEND Manifesto’ produced by LEARN Sheffield, which The Star understands will be launched on July 4, and is not yet publicly available.

The report reads: “Leaders are ambitious and have begun to make improvements, but these are yet to make a sufficient difference. As a result, children and young people’s needs are not met as quickly and effectively as they should be.”

Several teams from a broad range of services and schemes were praised, but were often not named by inspectors.

The report reads: “The partnership has a shared understanding of the urgent need to address the unacceptably long waiting times for neurodevelopmental diagnosis. The impact of current arrangements is that too many families face significant distress and feel unsupported.

“A radical transformation programme is underway to provide a strengthened universal offer. It is too soon to measure the impact of some of these changes. However, initiatives such as the Autism and Social Communication Education and Training Service, Autism in Schools, and the training offer from the PCF and prediagnosis support are starting to have a positive impact on the lives of children, young people and families.”

The Star contacted Sheffield City Council and NHS SY ICB individually for comment, but received a joint statement in response from an unnamed spokesperson.

It reads: “The Local Area Partnership (LAP) takes the findings of the multi-agency inspection on being a child or young person with SEND in Sheffield very seriously and acknowledges there is still considerable work required within organisations across the city to ensure the needs of children and young people are met in a timely manner and to improve outcomes.

“Together, and with parents, carers, guardians and children, we must continue, at pace, with our high aspirations to improve the quality of our Education, Health and Care Plans. In particular, we will continue to focus on children and young people who are neurodivergent, striving to ensure their needs are met early regardless of diagnosis and look to reduce the waiting times for diagnosis.

“We are encouraged that the Inspectors recognised the potential impact of our SEND Manifesto that is being developed by partners across the city, led by Learn Sheffield.

“As a LAP, we are committed to transforming Sheffield's approach to ensure we meet the needs of children and young people with SEND and improving their outcomes. It is important we work collaboratively, including with parents through organisations like the Sheffield Parent Carer Forum, to ensure every child and young person has the right opportunities to succeed.”

In response, Sheffield-based human rights lawyer and SEND activist, Chrissy Meleady, said: “There has been widespread systemic failings leading to significant concerns and complaints about the experiences and outcomes of disabled children and young people, which many have been persistently highlighting for a considerable period of time now.

“They continued to not listen to disabled children’s and young people’s voices and nor to their families and advocates and instead chose to bind themselves to the ‘yay sayers’, who aided and abetted them in their endeavours to suppress the extent of the realities of the harms, failings and services losses in a push at collective collateral damage limitation and gate keeping.

“We have in Sheffield some outstanding SEND practices and highly committed personnel and services and these deserve to be recognised and commended but we cannot lose sight of the mammoth task ahead to drag this city’s SEND provision up to acceptable standards. The local authority and health urgently need to do right by this city’s disabled children and their families and services. They must invest and listen properly now going forward.”

Sheffield parent Stevie Kendall also said: “Every parent in this city could have written this report and more.

“Our children and we as parents and families deserve better. It’s outrageous that a child in Sheffield can wait eight years for to be assessed for autism and they can’t even access an EHCP that is for purpose and receive the support they need.

“Our children are being badly let down and it’s a crying shame it’s going on in a big city like Sheffield.”