Education
How to get an Education Health Care Plan (EHCP)
If you believe your child requires additional support to access education, it is important to know how to secure the help they need. In this article, we explore how an Education Health Care Plan (EHCP) can help children with additional needs and how to get started.
Learning that your child or a child in your care needs additional support at school or college can be a stressful time, and it can be difficult to know where to start to ensure they get the same opportunities as other children.
One of the ways in which local authorities ensure that every child has the education they deserve is creating a tailored plan for children with specific needs. The plan should incorporate an understanding of the child’s unique health and care requirements, as well as how this might affect the way in which they access education, providing a holistic and personalised solution. This is known as an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP).
In this article, we explore how an EHCP can be beneficial and how they can be secured for children with additional support needs.
How can an Education Health Care Plan support my child?
Education Health Care Plans were first introduced in 2014 as part of the Children and Families Act. It aims to set out any issues that affect a child and young person’s ability to access education and what support they may need to overcome these challenges.
To be suitable for an EHCP, the child or young person must:
- have a learning difficulty or disability that has an impact on their progress through education; and
- their parent, guardian or carer – or the young person themselves – believes their school or college is not able to meet their requirements with the resource they currently have.
If your local authority determines that an EHCP could help your child, they will need to conduct an EHC needs assessment that includes observations and recommendations from several professionals across any relevant field (for instance, educational psychologists, social care practitioners and healthcare professionals).
How do I secure an Education Health Care Plan for my child?
The first thing to do if you feel your child needs additional support is to speak to their teachers to learn more about how they might be struggling in class. It may be that, by having an honest conversation with your child’s school, further support can be implemented straight away.
If this is not the case, or you and your child feel the support arranged is not enough, you can request that your local authority carries out an EHC needs assessment, with a view to issuing an EHCP.
You don’t need to have made the request by a particular point in your child’s education career (young people up to the age of 25 can be issued an EHCP), and they can be made at any time in the year.
If your child is under the age of 16, either you or the school can submit a request to the local authority in writing.
If the young person is over 16 years old (up to 25 years), it is also possible for they themselves to make the request if they wish, provided they have a sufficient understanding of what they are requesting.
What should I do if I’m struggling to get the support my child needs?
If you’re struggling to get an EHCP issued for your child, or if you feel that your local authority or child’s school has not implemented the support laid out in your child’s EHCP, you don’t have to go it alone.
Our leading education and SEN solicitors have helped hundreds of families, court of protection deputies and clinical negligence solicitors access the support they need to ensure their children get the education they deserve.
Find out how we can help you today by calling our team on 0330 041 5869. Alternatively, get in touch online and we’ll call you back as soon as possible.