Special Needs Jungle top ten EHCP Tips

1.Is the EHC Plan dated and signed? It is from the date of the final, signed and dated EHC Plan that your Local Authority becomes responsible for the provision in it.

2 Diagnoses all there? Are all of your child/young person’s diagnoses in Section B?

3 Wording should be specific – if you have expert reports saying ‘X has a diagnosis of dyslexia’ make sure this is inserted in Section B.

4 Does your EHC Plan include contradictory information? If so the incorrect information should be removed.

5 Is the information current? Anything older than two years old should be removed and updated.

6 Do you understand it? If you don’t understand your child’s EHC plan it is not doing its job properly. Does it need to be written in a simpler format?

7 Is it all still there? If your child/young person has transferred from a SSEN to an EHC Plan – has any of the therapies they were receiving ‘disappeared’?

8 Is therapy in the right place? If your child/young person is receiving SALT/OT etc. are these included in Section F? If they are only included in the Health sections, your Local Authority cannot be forced to provide them;

9 Provision should be quantified - ‘access to,’ ‘opportunities for’ and ‘to provide’; essentially allows the LA to provide as much or as little as they want. In terms of provision/therapies think, what, by who, how often, for how long?

10 If it isn't provided: If provision is quantified in Section F and the LA stop providing it, they can be forced to restart via a simple pre-action protocol letter on Solicitor’s headed paper.