1. I would like to request under the Freedom of Information Act the following information in connection with the educational provision offered by your local authority and with regard to children with a diagnosis equivalent to one of High Functioning Autism (”HFA”).
Devon County Council does not record this data in a manner that can be easily extracted from our systems. The diagnosis High Functioning Autism (HFA) is not recorded in the data held. Therefore, to provide an answer we would have to undertake a review of all files. We estimate that to carry out this exercise per individual file would take 5 minutes. Therefore to conclude this exercise for all 7000 files would take approximately 580 hours to complete.
Under the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 public authorities are not obliged to comply with requests which exceed the cost limit of £450 (equating to 18 hours of time). For this reason we believe that Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act applies (cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limits).
2. How many specialist schools does your authority currently have?
The LA maintain 9 specialist schools, there are 2 academy special schools and there are a number of independent special schools that are outside of the LA control that may exist in Devon. The Department of Education (DfE) keep a list of these schools. Please see the link below to access information about these. Independent special schools and colleges
3. How many designated specialist provision/Autism Units (including Communication and Interaction provision) within main stream schools are there currently within your local authority.
There are 7 Communication and Interaction Resource Bases (CAIRBS) based in Devon mainstream schools. The admission to these is managed by the local authority and for children with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP), not all children in the bases require a diagnosis of Autism.
4. How many of the places within the specialist schools or the designated specialist provision units are currently allocated to children diagnosed with or understood to have High Functioning Autism. Could you please tell me if possible what percentage of children of school age with this diagnosis this represents.
Please refer to our response in question 1
5. How many children with an HFA diagnosis attend out of authority or private school provisions? Again, I would be grateful if you can tell me what percentage this represents of the whole.
Please refer to our response in question 1
6. How many children are currently supported educationally by the local authority outside a school provision within the community or in their homes? Can you tell me how many hours of educational support is offered on a weekly basis to children falling into this category of care.
The number of hours offered for Education Other Than at School (EOTAS) are equivalent to full time provision.
7. How many Personal Budget arrangements does the local authority currently have?
There are 66 Education Personal Budgets
Details of previous responses found on the Council’s publication scheme may be helpful Diagnosis of Aspergers / Autism and Numbers