Send funding worth £3m will give hope, says mum

Jamey and Matt Carr run a charity that supports young people with special educational needs and disabilities in Braintree

The mum of a son with additional needs said she hoped a £2.8m package to improve a struggling special needs department would give hope to other parents.

Essex County Council has announced the funding to help clear its backlog of requests for education, health and care plans (EHCPs).

The local authority says it will continue working with external educational psychologists to complete the process within the legal deadline of 20 weeks.

Jamey Carr, who described her son's needs as "severe", said: "I feel that the families will be more hopeful that it will speed up the process."

Mrs Carr, who runs a playgroup for children with complex needs in Braintree, said some families "can go under the radar".

She said EHCPs were "the biggest thing parents and carers want assistance with".

They are a legal document that outlines the support needed by children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send).

"They need more support to be confident enough to challenge decisions that are made," she said.

She runs Pop Essex alongside her husband Matt Carr, the charity's chairman of trustees.

Their team of 20 staff regularly support up to 70 children every week during term time, doubling to about 140 in the school holidays.

The charity hopes to hold an EHCP workshop alongside another local charity later this year so parents and carers can be provided with support through the application process.

'Significant improvements'

In March 2024, just 1% of EHCPs in Essex were issued within the 20 week deadline - a rate that was worse than anywhere else in England.

Essex County Council said it had seen "significant improvements" since it started working with external assessors.

A backlog of 1,300 assessments at Essex had been reduced by 70%, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

Just under £2m will be allocated for the current financial year, and £800,000 in the next - which the council said was enough to fund 1,920 assessments.

The council said the remaining need could be delivered through other "existing or soon-to-be-delivered capacity".

Essex County Council receives roughly between 300 and 400 requests for an EHCP every month.