Stray Ferret Focus: How we investigated the crisis in special educational needs

Some articles can be written quickly; others take time — sometimes rather a lot of time.

While many news organisations focus purely on quick wins these days, the Stray Ferret combines the two. This requires a fair bit of thought and effort but we think it distinguishes us from the pack and hopefully provides an additional reason, beyond our seven-days-a-week rolling news service, to subscribe.

One recent example of this was senior reporter John Grainger’s two-part series on children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

In the lead-up to the new school term, John looked at the chronic shortage of school places for children with SEND - an issue of pressing importance to growing numbers of families across our district and beyond.

He combed through political party manifestoes, historical news reports and local authority data to gain a solid body of background research, and then put in a Freedom of Information request to North Yorkshire Council to help build up a more detailed picture of the situation.

John also spoke to parents of SEND children about their experience of securing a specialist school place.

As a result, we published an in-depth article and followed it up with a first-person report — and we'll also be revisiting the subject very soon with an update based on the council's response to our FOI request.

From our initial enquiries to receiving North Yorkshire Council's response to our FOI request, the whole process took one month.

The crisis in SEND provision is one of the biggest issues facing North Yorkshire Council today. Council chief executive Richard Flinton has told us the current system is broken. This issue will continue to matter for years, and we will keep pursuing it.

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