Research: SEND case officers are LAs’ “human shield” gatekeepers. But parents shouldn’t have to be their own key workers

With Dr Pooja Sharma

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Contents

As parent carers are all too aware, their relationship with SEND case officers can range from positive and constructive to adversarial and a complete breakdown.

A recent research article by Dr Pooja Sharma, Allies or adversaries? A reflection on the relationship between case officers and parent/carers, published in Support for Learning (2026), looks at this relationship. In her article, Dr Sharma describes how LA case officers currently sit in a “dual role of both supporter and gatekeeper”, a role that is “gravely underestimated”.

Her findings highlight delays, poor communication, inconsistent practice, and the emotional strain experienced by both case officers and the parents engaging with them every day. None of this will surprise families reading SNJ.

To me, this research paper has something important to say about the current context any SEND reform might land in. Not simply because it explains—and at times feels like it maybe justifies—the way parents often experience an adversarial relationship with local authority SEND departments, but because this research exposes something else. Despite their job title suggesting otherwise, LA case officers are not acting as “case” workers at all. Parents are frequently being forced to do that job instead.

Case officers feel like “human shields” for LA decisions,

Pooja Sharma lists responsibilities that, in any well-functioning SEND system, would normally be considered “casework”. This includes coordinating assessments, supporting transition planning, overseeing annual review processes, ensuring legal compliance and acting as a consistent professional presence for families. These are all tasks that would make life easier for families. However, they are also relational, child‑centred tasks that require the case officer to have sufficient judgement, autonomy, and time. But Dr Sharma describes how LA case officers are structurally prevented from doing any of this in their day-to-day work. Instead, they often end up being gatekeepers of provision, rather than offering casework and support that families need.

The research shows LA case officers currently face overwhelming caseloads, inadequate training, limited authority, constant turnover, bureaucratic pressure and budget constraints. We’ve also seen this in other research from Surrey. Dr Sharma describes how case officers are pushed into “procedural language”, “routinisation of decisions” and emotional distance from the families they are working with. She suggests that the LA case officer role has been hollowed out into an administrative gatekeeping function, with many feeling like “human shields” for LA decisions, absorbing frustration directed at the system. These working conditions make proper casework impossible.

Mentally retreating from the front line

Of course, it is also important to remember that structure is not the whole story. Dr Sharma describes how some case officers, facing the limiting structures that they work within, will retreat into process, rely on templates, avoid difficult conversations and create emotional distance. She describes these behaviours as coping mechanisms, but parents on the receiving end may feel that, despite recognising the difficult job, it’s still a choice being made by the individual case officers. Even within the constraints of the role, it is possible that individual case officers could act differently. For example, they could communicate more clearly, or be more transparent, or build relationships with families. They could get to know the children and young people they’re supporting, rather than hide behind process. They could challenge poor decisions rather than simply pass them on. We know this because some do.

When they do not, families will likely feel the consequences of this reduced role, that does not deliver proper case work. And because someone has to do the casework and co-ordination needed to help children with SEND thrive in education, parents often have to step in to fill the gap, if they have the capacity to do so.

Parents are doing the casework because the system leaves them no choice

My own recent PhD research found that parents of disabled children routinely have to take on the responsibilities the system claims to provide. Mothers described to me how they are forced to become coordinators, project managers, legal interpreters, advocates, and the only people ensuring their child’s rights are upheld. Parents chase missing reports, organise assessments, correct errors in EHCP drafts, monitor provision, escalate failures and sometimes even prepare tribunal bundles. Many will undertake training courses so they can understand the law well enough to challenge unlawful decisions and navigate complex complaints and appeals systems. Parents are not only the ones who keep the process moving, frequently they are also the people who hold the system to account.

Pooja Sharma’s article reinforces this reality, with tribunal data showing that 99% of appeals are decided in favour of families. She quotes Special Needs Jungle:

The very same LAs that make unlawful decisions in 99% of appealed cases will be responsible for making life‑changing decisions…

Families win their appeals because they have done the casework. They gather the evidence, document the failures and build the case. They do the job the local authority should have done in the first place, ensuring the right education and support is put in place.

Promoted

Why Sharma’s findings should encourage government to act

Dr Sharma focuses on the relationship between case officers and families, but the deeper issue is how local authorities are delivering their responsibilities. The Children & Families Act (2014) gives families rights, but there is nothing in it that ensures there is a workforce capable of delivering them. Instead, the legislation relies on parents to identify unmet need, request assessment, challenge unlawful decisions, monitor provision, escalate failures and enforce rights. And because case officers are not enabled or empowered to act as proper caseworkers on behalf of families, parents are left carrying the emotional, administrative and legal burden of a system that depends on their unpaid labour.

The way the system currently works, seems to assume parents can and will pick up the pieces – that parents will be able to become the caseworkers. And, as we know, this creates inequalities, because not all parents can do this in the same way.

Dr Sharma argues that case officers need clearer roles, better training, more resources and stronger professional guidance. She is right, but this alone is not enough.

A proper independent key worker system is needed

The SEND system cannot continue to rely on parents to act as caseworkers. If the government is serious about improving SEND, it must introduce a genuinely independent key-worker or supporter system, similar to the independent supporters used during the last SEND reforms.

This cannot be just a change in title or adding an extra layer of bureaucracy. There needs to be a dedicated professional who understands the child/young person, coordinates assessments and provision, supports families to navigate the system, builds trust and most importantly ensures accountability. In other words, a real caseworker. Someone who relieves families of the pressures they are currently under.

Independence is essential. A key worker who sits outside local authority structures would not be bound by the same constraints that limit case officers. They could act in the interests of the child and family, not of the budget. They would be able to build relationships rather than retreat behind process. They could challenge poor decisions rather than simply pass them on. They’d be able to do the work that parents themselves are currently forced to do.

It is time the government recognised the need to deliver a proper independent casework system that does not rely on parental resources, ability and capacity. The introduction of a completely independent key-worker/supporter model would finally give families the coordinated, relational, accountable support they should have had all along.

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About
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Sharon Smith

Co-Director at Special Needs Jungle Ltd

Sharon Smith is a co-director for Special Needs Jungle and is the mother of a young lady who has Down's syndrome. Sharon undertook doctoral research at the University of Birmingham, exploring inclusion with parents of disabled children. Following successful completion of her PhD in 2024, Sharon can now call herself Dr Smith, but rarely does. Her research interests include risk/vulnerability, belonging, co-production, inclusion and philosophy of education.