Following yesterday’s Community Rally to save SENDIASS, which Conservative Councillors attended, and consistent pressure and campaigning by the Conservative Group – and Cllr Simon Morrall (Con, Frankley Great Park) Shadow Cabinet Member for Children, Young People & Families, in particular – the SENDIASS review has finally been publicly published.
The long-awaited SEDNIASS review has been released by Birmingham City Council. The report has been published after Cllr Morrall had called for the Labour Administration to be more honest with regard to the future of SENDDIASS & SEND services in the City. Cllr Morrall insisted the report be released to the public at the Education Overview & Scrutiny Committee, arguing that the review must be made public so that questions could be asked of SENDIASS & the decisions being made about the service by the Council & Commissioner – based on this review – could be understood by those following the process.
The review into SENDIASS comes after the intervention in Birmingham SEND services by a Government appointed Commissioner – the first such instance. A SEND area inspection in 2018 found 13 areas of weakness and after 30 months a reinspection found that sufficient progress had not been made in 12 of the areas.
Cllr Morrall said,
“I’m concerned Sendiass has not had a chance to be scrutinised over this as the commissioner has chosen to keep it private for so long and has fought long and hard to keep it private. I would not be doing my job as Shadow Cabinet member to not raise serious red flags about this and I’m happy he has finally seen sense to release it to the public so we can scrutinise it. We have serious problems with transparency on this council and scrutiny is a cross-party body of local democracy that is robust in holding departments to account. The fact it has taken this long to see this report raises serious concerns and we will explore this in detail at the next education committee, which again, they tried so hard not to have in public. What are they hiding? We will find out.”
Cllr Ewan Mackey (Con, Roughley) said,
“Our concern is that this process should be transparent. Services users need to know that they are being listened to and their concerns were taken seriously. The quality of the service is what is really important here, and this review must lead to an improved service while maintaining access to those who need it”.
