FAMILIES have been “put through hell” by Wirral Council it was claimed during a debate over services for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

The local authority will now write to the government with unanimous support calling for reform.

A motion has been put forward by Wirral’s Labour Party at a full council meeting on December 2 calling for action to be taken over what was described as mismanagement of SEND services across the country by the previous Conservative government. The motion call for long term funding to address local needs after a critical report by the National Audit Office into services nationwide.

Labour said the findings were concerning and services had been “forced to stretch to breaking point.” They said: “Many families have lost confidence in the SEND system, and since 2019, there has been no consistent improvement in outcomes for these young people. The report also highlights that the system is financially unsustainable and urgently requires reform.

“The previous Conservative government failed these children and their families. In contrast, the new Labour government is committed to addressing these concerns.”

The motion was voted through unanimously with changes by Wirral’s Green Party that highlighted the financial impact on families and an improvement notice issued by the government earlier this year. Despite voting for the motion, the Conservatives criticised Labour over their criticism of the previous government asking them “to try and find a way of uniting the council rather than trying to divide us.”

Labour chair of the council’s children’s and education committee, Stephen Bennett, said: “It is concerning that many people have lost confidence in the SEND system and 14 years of mismanagement by a Tory government and it’s drastically underfunded locally and nationally,” adding: “We need a Labour government to take on this task and to bring about meaningful change.”

However, the Conservatives quickly hit back. Cllr Ian Lewis said: “Too often the problem […] is not a lack of money. It is a lack of process. We have all as councillors come across cases where families have been distressed and distraught and put through hell simply because we as an authority have failed to communicate with those families.

“Even if it’s communicating bad news, we just don’t communicate at all. That causes frustrations and delays and most of all it affects the children who we are corporate parents for.”

He pointed to £4.1m given earlier this year by the then-Conservative government to create extra SEND places in mainstream schools in Wirral as well as failings investigated by the Local Government Ombudsman that led to the council paying out thousands of pounds to families.

Wirral’s Green Party also criticised the previous government. Cllr Judith Grier said families had been left struggling for years on waiting lists and services had been “chronically underfunded at a national level for over a decade with children with SEND being victims of this.”

She said: “I have worked with adults who have ended up on a spiral of drink and drugs because in their words it was the only thing that calmed down all the thoughts racing around in their head. They had undiagnosed ADHD.”

Despite disagreements over the previous government’s role in the current state of SEND services, there was cross-party agreement that services had improved under the local authority’s children’s director Elizabeth Hartley who took over the role earlier this year. Cllr Chris Carubia said she had “made a massive impact” and SEND wasn’t previously a priority for the local authority.

He said other councils were in similar positions, adding: “We’re not brilliant but we are no worse than anybody else and everybody is in the same position.”

Motions reaffirming the council’s climate emergency declaration and looking into why the council is racking up so much interest on late invoices were voted through by the council. However, a motion supported by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats criticising the government’s inheritance tax changes for farms was lost.