I'll start with the good.
Personally and all of this is personal experience, I find social care here not too bad. On the whole it's quite fair and social workers do genuinely want to help. Sometimes policy and eligibility criterias hold them back a bit but that's the same anywhere.
Schools I think try their best genuinely on the whole (with some cranky exceptions) but they are curtailed by tiny capped budgets for children with EHCPs which are based on I don't know what. Certainly not what is written in the EHCPs. I don't necessarily get the sense that all schools understand the law underpinning EHCPs and that's not really their fault.
Professionals I think have a willing to help but again sometimes seem a bit more well versed in local policy than the law of the country. Often they are also curtailed by policy thresholds. I think it would be good if there was some county wide training on how to write lawful provision in EHCPs. There is a LOT of very non specific wishy washy stuff which is essentially meaningless.
The big problem here for me is the 0-25 team and my head hurts even thinking about that. They've recently installed a hub due Ofsted pulling them for 'communication problems' and I'm a bit concerned that the point was missed somewhat. It's wasn't the delivery or 'vehicle' of communication that was ever the problem. Letters, Emails, Telephone calls were all ok, it was the quality and responsiveness of the communication that was the problem for me (and still is the problem). Also again it feels a bit like no one cares much about the law and sometimes feels like it's all a bit 'reactive' and is somewhat 'made up as we go along'.
I could be much harsher to be honest because I've gone though 50 shades of hell here but I'm trying to be balanced and helpful and trying very hard to seperate my ongoing distress, frustration, confusion and frankly losing the will to want to engage with it at all. I will say that I don't think anything has improved at all since the last Ofsted on the ground. It's business as usual but now we've got an EHCP hub which misses the point and which most people I speak to absolutely hate and don't think professionals are finding much joy in it either.
Still an awful lot to do to be honest. Still an awful lot of children out of school and a lot of very unhappy distressed parents.
Hell is the right word. And yes, I found a lot of people making up the law (and the funding information) as they went along. Can't imagine how bad it must have been before the Ofsted report! I can't believe Ofsted had anything to do with the fiasco we went through.