28th August 2017 Dear Trade Union Leaders, I am writing to you today to lodge my concerns with you in respect of how Sheffield City Council, has been failing in their SEND legal and moral duties and requirements. We welcome today, their public acknowledgement of these failings. We have already detailed and formally lodged with the Head of SEND in Sheffield our deep concern at the way staff in the service have not been given the adequate resources they need to do their job. We are minded that not all staff have actively sought to not adhere to their legal responsibilities, or gone out of their way to deliberately, mislead parents/carers and that the vast majority of staff are committed, dedicated, kind and caring people, who have been obliged to work under terrible strains and to an agenda that has not been of their intent nor making nor in the best interests of the Disabled children of this City. I have attended meetings where it is evident that these staff, schools and head teachers are being subjected to terrible pressure to accommodate children in specified schools that align to the Council’s resource led rather than needs led approach. This approach being described to us by the Head of SEND, being to reduce Special Educational School costs, and to have the vast majority of children with SEND only on My Plans and not EHC Plans and based in mainstream provisions, with only the most extremely severe children being permitted to access Special School, or restricted IR Unit provision. This being proffered despite the requirements of the SEND Code of Practice detailing that children’s unique SEND requirements should be not merely identified, but planned for and met in schools that are most suitable to the SEND requirements- best fit schools. Failings to give proper due regard to these children’s needs and the harms the failings have incurred to these children, is being described by parents/carers as being ‘abusive’ to their children and they as parents/carers and families. Systemic failings, in timescales to meet statutory guidelines, parents being misled and misdirected about their children’s and their own rights and entitlements has been rife, refusals to allow children to be assessed for EHC Plans, delays in Plans being blamed by management on staff in the Council leaving, being off sick etc. have to been rife, failings to adhere to legal timelines etc. have to been blamed upon staff. In one meeting where I child was being forced to be placed in a mainstream setting against professionals advice and the preference of parents and the best needs of the child, and indeed when identification was made in this meeting to the fact that the mainstream schools ( including SENCO;s and Head teachers) were also asserting that the child was not a right fit for the child, and the placement in mainstream would be detrimental to her, the SEND Manager stated that the mainstream schools would take the child and other children with complex impairments like this child because the Council have ways of making the schools do what they were told to do by the Council. No care in effect for the child not being suited to the school, or the pressures upon staff in mainstream to meet these children’s SEND requirements in over sensory and unsuitable environments, nor any care for other children in an environment or indeed any care for the staff in schools, nurseries etc, ill-equipped in many instances , over stretched as it is with class size and demands and being expected to support a child whose needs are such, that they require fit for purpose Specialist or IR Unit provision. Please know, that by the parents/carets formulating this challenge to Sheffield City Council and other, LAs to follow, they do so, not to attack the good staff in the SEND Department, or the good staff in schools, nurseries etc. but rather the systemic approach and failings that have been ultimately detrimental to their children, detrimental to their nurseries and schools and detrimental to the good and caring staff in SEND Department, in nurseries and schools, pupil referral units, health and developmental assessment and support provisions etc. The parents/carers stand in solidarity with the ‘good and caring staff’, they recognise that adverse decisions have been and are being made at political and senior managerial level and we honour those staff in public authorities and other settings who have stood up and spoken out and we are calling upon the Sheffield City Council to stop all the detriments and to fix the problems of the Council’s making and driving. Chrissy Meleady MBE Named Organiser of the Protest March on 9th September 2017