SEND staff resignations trigger care plan backlog

An east London council has said it is under pressure after a third of its special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) staff resigned last year, creating a backlog of hundreds of assessments.

Barking and Dagenham Council issued 313 Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) in 2025, down from 502 the year before.

The drop in EHCPs, legal documents that set out what extra support children are entitled to, came despite a rising demand for assessments.

A council spokesperson told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that recruiting SEND staff was a challenge across London and they had created a new team to "focus solely on completing assessments and clearing the backlog".

Four staff from the council's 12-person SEND team resigned in summer 2025, an Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting heard on 11 February.

Agency staff had been introduced to cover the vacancies before the permanent roles are filled.

The council's commissioning director for education, Jane Hargreaves, said staff were working in "an incredibly high-pressured environment".

She told the meeting that the increased demand for SEND support had coincided with the aftermath of the pandemic and the cost of living crisis, adding that the council had started to struggle with demand in 2022 and "never really caught up".

Margaret Mullane, Labour MP for Dagenham and Rainham said the borough was struggling to serve its SEND children.

In 2024, 150 children and young people with existing EHCPs moved into, or were placed in, Barking and Dagenham from other boroughs, with about 40% requiring a specialist placement.

"Staff working in the education, health and care team at Barking and Dagenham council are recording caseloads of 200 to 300 per staff member, which is just not sustainable," Mullane said.

A total of 646 children were referred for an EHCP assessment in Barking and Dagenham in 2025.

Of those, 21.2% of EHCPs were issued within the legal time limit of 20 weeks, down from 27.2% the previous year.

The meeting heard that the staff resignations led to a "backlog" of 156 cases on top of 245 new requests received.

The council's head of SEND Denise Watts admitted in the meeting that "it's not where we want to be", but "we're working hard to get there".

The picture is similar across the country, with local authorities and charities that provide SEND support struggling with staffing and funding.

The Labour government said it inherited a SEND system "on its knees" and recent research by the Local Government Association (LGA) suggested 80% of councils could face bankruptcy over their mounting SEND costs.

The government is expected to outline reforms to the SEND system in the next few weeks.

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