MUMS of special needs children in Essex claim they are being left behind while waiting months for an assessment.

Essex County Council has been battling to improve the service from its position as the worst in the country when just one per cent of assessments were completed inside the 20-week target.

While the original backlog of 1,300 cases has been successfully cleared, demand for assessments has continued to rise. Essex County Council currently agrees on average 220 new requests for assessment each month, a volume that exceeds available Educational Psychology (EP) service capacity. As a result, the waiting list has continued to grow. At the start of the 2025/26 academic year, the number of cases awaiting EP allocation had reached 1,998, highlighting the sustained pressure on the system despite targeted efforts to improve performance.

One of the parents waiting for an assessment is Laura Holmes who says her five-year-old son is being let down because of the delay in getting an Education, Health and Care Plan (ECHP).

Her son has not been in school since September and Laura claims he is already a year behind his peers as he should have started reception last year and she has been waiting for an ECHP since June. Laura said her son's severe anxiety means he doesn't like leaving the house and hates being with other children.

She said: "If I force him or drag him out all the work I've done over the last few months to get him out of the house means I'm going to be back at square one. We need an assessment done. But all I get is an email every few months saying we're incredibly sorry that no one's become available and will let you know when someone come becomes available."

She added: "In an ideal world I would love him to go to school and make friends. But this is what I'm working with and I want him to have an education. I can work on his social skills but at this moment in time he's had absolutely no education. Not a thing."

Siobhan West has been waiting 35 weeks for her eight-year-old son to be assessed. He is currently only accessing about two hours of school each day. She said mainstream school is not an option because he needs complete silence to work. She adds he has not done any literacy work since September.

She said: "I don't think he would cope in a mainstream secondary school. Long term the goal is to find a suitable SEND school for him.

"Put it this way – when he's at school for the two hours he's there he can't access his classroom. He can't cope with any kind of noise especially when he's got to learn.

"To do any classwork it's got to be completely silent so he spends his time in their breakout room. So it's just him and his one-to-one member of staff. That's how he learns better, but also there's lots of learning which he is not accessing. He's accessing maths work because he likes maths but he hasn't done any literacy work since September."

Jody Pudney

Jody Pudney says she is facing waiting for more than a year for her 12-year-old daughter to be assessed. She said: "And all that time my daughter's needs are not being met and she's hardly going to school.

"She does go to school but not very often – maybe one or two days a week if we're lucky. She's what they say is a heavy masker. So she masks when she's at school and has meltdowns at home which then sends her into burnout and then she can't cope with anything.

"It's what they call autistic burnout. She's was diagnosed with autism in November [2024] and that was after a huge long wait which over took over a year by the NHS.

"She's one of those special education needs betweeners – in between mainstream and SEND but she needs the right accommodation in mainstream to be able to access it. And at the minute she's not able to do that.

"Getting through to this stage was an absolute battle and I thought once we'd got through to that I thought it would be excellent only to be told you're on this massive wait list again.

"And the whole time she's not getting assessed by professionals to be able to tell us what it is she needs to be able to access. It's not just education that she's missing out on. It's the socialisation. Her friends are moving on. She's missing out on the things she loves which is sport. She just existing at the moment."

Kerry Green

Kerry Green's six-year-old autistic son is being "denied an education he's entitled to" as no suitable school place has been found for him by the council Kerry, 47, from Thundersley, insists not enough is being done to provide her son, Lucas, with an education, leaving him "isolated" at home.

She said: "My son isn't even in school and I've had no one knocking my door asking about his home education which I was forced into doing. It's a much bigger issue than me saying my son doesn't go to school."

A spokesperson for Essex County Council said: "We are sorry to hear about the experiences of these parents and children. EHCP delays are a nation-wide problem, partly due to a shortage of educational psychologists, and we have been open about our ongoing work to improve the local SEND system.

"We are seeing some progress because of the changes and investments we have made. 1,911 EHCPs were issued in the 2024/25 academic year, 27 per cent of which were issued within 20 weeks. However, improvement can only truly be measured in terms of families' experiences of the Essex SEND system, and we won't stop until all families are experiencing progress."

Responding to the Government's announcement of investment in creating specialist school places for children with SEND, Councillor Amanda Hopgood, Chair of the Local Government Association's Children, Young People and Families Committee, said: "It is vitally important that inclusion is at the heart of reforming the SEND system, so it is good that government is investing in creating specialist places in mainstream schools, so children are able to attend their local school with their friends in their local area.

"We are also pleased government has confirmed special schools will be funded or councils will be given money to develop their own provision. We would like to see government implement a single, local funding pot, held by councils, to build appropriate provision quickly and effectively.

"We look forward to the Government's Schools White Paper setting out a roadmap to a system that meets children's needs more quickly and effectively, in their local mainstream school system where an EHCP is not necessary to get support, with a workforce that has the capacity and right skills."