How did you survive the EHCP process?

[SinkGirl]

I honestly just can’t do this. I’m so far out of my depth, it’s ridiculous. I’ve had advice from different charities and places which I’m following but it’s just impossible.

I’m not asking for advice on what to do - I know that we are one meeting away from pursuing a tribunal and am trying to accept that because being assertive is not my forte but if I don’t push properly I’m letting my boys down.

I just want to know how you get through this in one piece mentally because I’m not doing very well at that right now.

It’s all lifted from the Ed Psych reports which I told them were insufficient immediately when I saw the drafts a month ago. Now I have to wait another week, then wait for whatever else they agree to do (if anything), or appeal it and wasting more time.

What I’m most annoyed about is the missing SALT recommendations which are:

A high level of adult support to enable the child to attend to, understand and participate verbally in tasks and interact socially with peers

Specialist teaching by teachers / staff with experience of working in small classes and who have specialist knowledge of ASD who are able to plan and deliver the curriculum in order to develop communication skills of the child throughout the school day

An identified (key) member of school based staff specially trained in working with ASD. The child will have access to this key member of staff so that they can facilitate the generalisation of communication / language skills into the school day, help to resolve breakdowns in communication, link with other school staff and alert SENCO regarding issues

All staff working with him should be trained in PECS, Signalong, Total Communication and PEIC-D

How is a mainstream nursery supposed to provide this? But hey, it’s not in the plan because they’ve left it out.

Ive been in the process for 18 years and still fighting for my son (emergancy echp meeting been called)

About to start the process again for my step daughter.

Keep fighting for them you knownyour children beat. You are their best advocate

You just go through it guided by the senco. It wasn't too arduous 5 years ago (last time I did one) but she was already in the system and it was switching to the new system I suppose, all the health stuff was well documented.

@SinkGirl
You hit the nail on the head when you said, what if parents can't do the paperwork or understand. Unfortunately these kids turn up at school undiagnosed (often parents haven't seen a healthcare professional) and often end up being excluded etc. My DD's now an adult and was diagnosed at 2 so things are definitely harder now

Stucknoue I’m sorry to disagree so strongly but honestly, sadly, With the exception of the sen officer, the very last person that anyone should rely on for information about the legal aspects of this process is the school senco. The reason for this is that the Senco always take that information from the local authority.

Ipsea and Sossen are really the only truly independent and reliable sources of information.

Honestly the nursery can’t help anyway. They’re out of their depth, juggling multiple kids with SEN and they’ve never done EHCPs for a child who’s younger than about to start reception.

Their needs are very well documented - there are just no provisions for them. Honestly I don’t think the people who’ve assessed them even know what provisions they really need.

All this bullshit about early diagnosis and the importance of early interventions and they’re refusing specialist because they’ve made progress?

Too right they’ve made progress. I referred us to portage. I referred us to SALT. I’ve worked my bloody arse off for the last 18 months to get them some proper support and get the diagnoses sorted.

They’re still in the birth to 11 months range for communication, understanding and social skills FFS. And not much higher for the rest. How much progress are they really making? I see my friends kids, every bloody time I see them they’re doing something new - we’ve been mainly stuck at one level for a year and a half, with some improvements here and there.

Sorry. I’m obviously back to being angry!

We have our meeting with the council on Thursday morning. DH is coming with me and I’m terrified. I’ve annotated both plans and added in needs that are missing from the plan and where they can be found in the reports, and pulled out some letters which are relevant and they don’t have. Not worried about that part, it’s all backed up.

The crux of the problem is the complete lack of connection between needs, outcomes and provisions, and where provisions are there they’re vague and useless. I’ve put them all into a table and it’s actually embarrassing. I think there are maybe three points in provisions that don’t need to be quantified or specified further. It all looks like this.

I’m reading through the code of conduct again. Someone who knows what they’re doing is looking at my tables to see if it seems reasonable. Is there anything else I can do over the next few days to prepare?

This is really the one opportunity to sort things out as if they say anything other than they’ll get new reports / seek further advice then I’m going to appeal.

One thing I’m really concerned about is the nursery reports - they say that they are giving them 1:1 at all mealtimes and for adult led activities through the day. This is simply not true. They’ve already looked at the proposed plans and said to me that they wouldn’t be able to meet them. I don’t know why they’re telling the LA that they’re meeting their needs and telling me they can’t and I’m not sure how best to handle that - will be speaking to the manager this afternoon when I pick them up.

Iirc, East Sussex wrote to their mainstream schools, telling them the LA needed more support from schools, when the LA was trying to argue the child’s needs could be met in mainstream in tribunal - while the parents were asking for a specialist school. In other words, heads of mainstream schools were telling the truth too much and agreeing their school could not meet the needs!

Maybe the nursery has been told by the LA to support it, seeing as you are seeking special provision?

Anyway, regardless of whether the nursery is providing 1:1 support or not; you need it quantified and specified in the EHC plan as per the law - the nursery could take any SEN provision away next week, if they run out of money, if it’s not specified in the EHC plan!

Also, the case ex parte E (which related to statements, but now applies to EHC plans too) says that all needs should be described and then there should be matching provisions to meet those needs. The LA can’t pick and choose which needs to meet, and leave some needs unmet!

Agreed. I’d understand it more if we were arguing about section B and what needs to be in there, or even if it was just that provisions are too vague, but having so many needs in the plan without any provisions at all is just weird. Obviously the LA have advised the EPs to be vague as most of this comes from them and they can’t possibly believe they’ve set adequate provisions.

Bear in mind that you only have right of appeal once the EHCP has been finalised. Sometimes it is better to accept the first crap draft and ask for the plan to be finalised despite disagreeing that it is adequate. Otherwise they may agree to a few insignificant changes and then take extra time to produce a 2nd draft, then time for parents response, then time to finalise. It's a delaying tactic.

Yes, I did that. Our draft was so poor that there was no way we were going to agree. It was also getting towards the date in Feb when all the notifications of placement at the next key stage for existing EHCPs are due and I was advised that the appeal system gets swamped after that and I wanted to beat the rush.

I agree - that’s my plan if things don’t go well on Thursday. I would like to hear what they have to say. Frustratingly I don’t think it will go as far as getting to tribunal because I don’t think they have much of a case, it seems if I do appeal and I want to make them get missing reports or get new reports I’ll have to file a request for changes (think that’s what it’s called) which will also take time - if they’ll agree to do it off the back of this it should be quicker in theory, but it’s a risk as if they don’t then I’ll have to appeal anyway. I plan to say that if they won’t take further advice or if the advice comes back as insufficient to set specific provisions then I will be appealing right away - I’m hoping they’ll see I mean business and will do it otherwise they’ll just have to spend a lot of time and then do it properly later. We shall see.

Quick update.

So it turns out that, a week prior to our meeting, the panel decided that DT2 can have a specialist place. It’s just DT1 that they’ve said no to. We won’t know which until the specialist panel at the end of January and although we’ve asked for a place ASAP, I’m concerned that he won’t get a place until September.

They made the requested changes to the areas of need and added a couple of outcomes that were in plans. I was told she needed to check with her boss before including the missing provisions from the SALT plan. I’ve been asked to submit a statement on why I believe he needs a specialist place, which I’ve done.

They’re going to finalise the plans today. DT1’s will be reconsidered for a specialist place next week.

If they are both given specialist places then IPSEA reckon it’s best to just go along and get focus on improving provisions at their next review in 6 months.

If not, I will appeal - I’ve managed to find so many instances where they haven’t met the code and lots of case law which clearly shows the plans aren’t sufficient. I’d be shocked if it got as far as tribunal but who knows.

My concern is if they are both given specialist places but told there are no spaces until September, then we are left with them at nursery with shitty plans for 9 months, although I suppose we are still better off than we are now because they should (?) give nursery funding in the interim for extra support?

Oh, and I said that they need an OT assessment urgently but to avoid delay I’d be happy if they wrote that need in as a provision rather than waiting until they can get one. They don’t seem to understand that this is something they need to do, since I requested it months ago, and since their plans show extensive evidence of sensory issues, delays in self care etc.

So I’ve put it in writing that the code states they need to comply with reasonable requests for assessment, so I’m very reasonably asking for this need to be put into the provisions rather than appealing on the basis that they haven’t done it.

I may not quite understand what you mean; but I would not allow them to make provision contingent on the outcome of an assessment within the EHC plan itself? OT provisions should be specified in the EHC plan, not be dependent on the assessment?

See the cases involving LB of Greenwich, and Rotherham on the Ipsea website:

www.ipsea.org.uk/Pages/FAQs/Category/case-law

They should definitely have OT provision in the plan itself, but there’s none as they haven’t seen an OT for nearly a year - we were told there’s nothing they can do at their age but I’m sure it’s different now. IPSEA said that if they agree to specialist places for them then I’m much better off accepting the plans, getting them into better settings and focussing on getting more detailed provisions set at the six month review (which they’ve already agreed to because of their age).

It’s hard to know what to do for the best honestly. If I fight it I’m just delaying them getting more support even longer.