Just over a quarter of education plans for children with special educational needs are completed within 20 weeks as the council continues its work to improve services. 

Suffolk County Council offered an update on its work for SEND provision, after it recently emergency it had paid out more than £78,000 to families who made educational complaints in the past year.

The council said it has created a new case management system, allowing them to build a secure data set and streamline processes with schools and parents.

It has also introduced a full-time telephone line for all school staff for questions on inclusion, and have introduced support for schools to reduce, and prevent, the number of exclusions.

East Anglian Daily Times: Rachel Hood with protestors over SEND in March. Credit: Charlotte BondRachel Hood with protestors over SEND in March. Credit: Charlotte Bond (Image: Charlotte Bond)

25% of parents who were in the Education, Health and Care (EHC) assessment process between November and February fed back their experience, with 85% of them finding family services coordinators to be helpful.

One of the big challenges at the moment is around the timeline of the EHC plan, with just 28.1% of the EHCP's being issued within the 20 week timescale.

Ros Somerville at Suffolk County Council, said: "If you have an EHC plan, we have to issue a new plan naming their new school by particular dates of the year.

"We have seen an improvement in our performance in that, and we will continue to work to make that perfect.

"We are making progress over time and that's important because children then have a good knowledge about where they are going.

"There are a number of challenges that continue.

"We recognise that whilst we can talk about those areas of progress, there are still things that we are working on."

Another challenge they are facing relates to not having the staff capacity to cater for specialist sections.