Every child deserves the best possible start in life and the support that allows them to fulfil their potential. For children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), this support often comes in the form of an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP).
An EHCP is a legally binding document that sets out a child or young person’s special educational, health, and social care needs. It describes the extra help that will be given to meet those needs and how that help will support the child or young person to achieve what they want in their life. The help(provision) has to be specific, detailed and quantified.
An EHCP is an expensive process, Local Authorities will not issue them without clear evidence.
Obtaining an EHCP will start with asking the LA for an EHC needs assessment
There is an example letter here taken from the IPSEA website.
You do not need to complete twenty different forms or do anything else. All you need is that letter and what evidence you have at that time.
These are the common reasons why a LA should not agree to assess.
- 2/3 cycles of Plan – Assess – Do
- School to provide EP, SALT, OT reports before a decision can be made
- The child needs to be at the 2nd centile or lower to be considered
- Evidence that the school have spent £6,000 on the child
- You can only expect to get a statutory assessment if the child has a diagnosis.
- A local authority has a non-statutory ‘plan’ which must be accepted as an alternative and ‘first step’ to an EHCP.
- If you wish your child to be considered for an EHCP assessment, you have to send a list of 12 documents.
- Your EHCP needs assessment request must include specialist reports.
- They don’t issue EHCPS any more
- He/She are making progress therefore does not need an EHCP
- We don’t accept private reports
- We don’t accept PDA diagnosis
- We are resetting everything after COVID – got big backlogs
All of these reasons are false.
They are all designed to stop you from making the request. For the most part they are using LA policies as the reason for refusal rather than the legal tests. LA policies tend to set a higher access point than the law.