Shocked about deadline results for education, health and care needs (ECHPs) across England

[Sunseastars]

Saw the headlines on the BBC last week about ECHPs and just came across this research and tool on this website https://tutorperch.com/tools/ehcp and I am absolutely shocked at the difference across councils in England at meeting the EHCP deadlines!

I looked up my council (Greenwich) and found that only 30 something percent of the plans were met by the deadline in 2025, and it seems to be wildly fluctuating over the years. Don't know what's happening in Lewisham as meeting the deadline has fallen 71% in a year, whereas lots of places in the North seemed to have massively improved! Even within London it's very varied with some councils having 100%.

The England average is only 46%. This seems a pressing concern for parents as it seems that percentage is decreasing over time nationally and the BBC said the number of children with ECHPs is increasing.

What's your experience with ECHP deadlines, did anyone's council miss their deadline? AIBU being really worried by these results? How long did it take for you?

Was there any more info? Something tells me that Greenwich and Lewisham are going to have way, way more EHCPs to handle than South Bucks or Wokingham? Are they staffed accordingly?

it seems that percentage is decreasing over time nationally and the BBC said the number of children with ECHPs is increasing.

Well, that's not surprising, surely? Record increases will reflect even sharper rises in applications, and no corresponding increase in resource will mean much longer waits.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj4g18gy14no

Just checked and my area (SE) is over 80%. DC has an EHCP and it came through within the deadline and had the summer holidays during it too. I was very impressed with the process but both me and school were quick to reply.

@Minasama when you look at absolute numbers, yes Lewisham has more EHCPs. But Lewisham is so much bigger, you expect the authorities to be resourced in scale with the population.

Borough of Lewisham: population of 303,000. It manages 3700 EHCPs which is 1.2% of the population

Wokingham Local Authority census shows population of 187,000. It manages 2400 EHCPs which is 1.3% of the population.

Lewisham saw a 58% increase in EHCP applications between 2019 and 2026

Wokingham saw a 161% increase in the same period. Perhaps you’d expect that in an affluent area, more parents may have the resources and awareness to push for support.

Working in a primary, I can't think of the last one we've had within the deadline. They only ever come after lots of emails from us and parents. It's incredibly problematic, especially for new starters to primary and transition to secondary.

Ours was 80% recently but they clearly put all hands on deck just before an Ofsted inspection as no one could get hold of anyone in the service for weeks.

You might also find the statistics on the government’s website here interesting.

Local councils are swamped. I had a close family member that worked doing EHCPs for their local authority. The team were overwhelmed with requests and they all worked huge overtime trying to get through the backlog, many suffering from burnout and got fed up of being screamed and shouted at by parents when they are just trying to do their best and help. No budget to hire extra people so they just had to get on with it.
My family member very frequently worked 18 hour days for years to try and keep up which took a huge toll on them and by the time they left, they worked out they had worked OVER A YEAR FOR FREE as they couldn’t take all the toil they were owed from trying to hit deadlines and they don’t get paid for overtime either.
So whilst I appreciate how frustrating it is for parents and schools, spare a thought for the poor people trying to keep the ship afloat.

why is it always the parents who get the blame? How is it our fault send services are under resourced and understaffed? Maybe they actually left because they had a shit and toxic employer who didn't give a fuck about their workload?

I can well believe it. I have a teen waiting for amendments to her EHCP for transition to post-16 education. Phase transfer amendments are supposed to be prioritised but her final plan should have been issued by the legal deadline of 31st March and still nothing. I have chased repeatedly, issued complaints and finally got a couple of lines of email in response. I appreciate how overworked the caseworkers are and think it must be a terrible job, but my vulnerable 16 year old who needs a secure transition plan now doesn't even have a placement for September. The only next step I can take is to send a pre-action protocol letter which will probably involve the cost of instructing a solicitor. My council isn't even the worst, although they are on a pretty lowly 20%.

On top of it all, I'm a fairly well clued-up parent who has been chasing them regularly. I work in a school in a deprived area and many of our parents of children waiting for our EHCP would find it difficult to be able to deal with all the paperwork required to keep on top of it all. We have children who have been waiting months and months even for a needs assessment.

Happiness can often be linked to expectations. The expectation that the EHCP process should take 20 weeks can leave families understandably disappointed when it takes much longer.

Where did the original 20-week timescale come from? It was set out in the 2014 (revised 2015) SEND Code of Practice. At the time, it was envisaged that fewer children would require an EHCP than had previously received Statements of Special Educational Needs.

The opposite is the reality. In 2014, around 240,000 children received the highest level of statutory support. Today, that figure is approximately 718,000 - almost three times as many (a 200% increase).

That growth doesn't simply mean writing three times as many plans. It also means commissioning far more professional reports, longer waiting lists for those assessments, more consultations with schools, and significantly greater administrative workloads for those involved.

If every other part of the system had remained unchanged, a simple comparison would suggest that a 20-week process could take closer to 60 weeks under a threefold increase in demand.

Of course, waiting times also depend on staffing, funding, and system capacity, so this is an illustration of the pressure on the system rather than a precise prediction.

I wonder if the expectation was more in line with the maths and parents were expecting a 60 week process - how different the levels of frustration would be or even how that might reframe how extraordinary it is that some councils are meeting the 20 week deadlines at all.

They need to give educational psychologists pay rises in line with inflation to stop them all leaving to go private or part time

@RudolphTheReindeer it is always about the parental blame, isn’t it? It is easier to blame the ‘unreasonable’ ‘sharp-elbowed’ parents who ‘demanding’ ‘golden ticket’ EHCPs than acknowledge parents wanting LAs to comply, with law when they have been repeatedly shown lack of time, resources and staffing are not lawful excuses for breaches of deadlines.

@Sweetbeansandmochi the 20 week deadline is mentioned in the SENCOP but is underpinned by Regulation 13(2) of The Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014. It isn’t just an expectation parents have. It is, with a few lawful exceptions, a legal requirement. Parents are right to advocate for their DC and enforce their DC’s rights.

My sister works in this system (won't say where) and what's worse than missing deadlines is that in order to meet deadlines, priority can be given to those who are still within deadline just to get the 'stats' up.

So, that means if you've already been waiting ages and gone over the deadline then you're not a priority anymore. Someone with a later application can be processed more quickly just to get within the deadline and make the council look better. It's shocking and she absolutely hates being part of it (luckily it's not her main job, she's just helping the process to speed up).

So, I suppose my point is, that those who have massively increased their percentage may be doing it unfairly, likely to be so if it's a very drastic jump. And dependent on how they record data eg. applications put in in 2024 could have all been processed within 20weeks but there may have been those who applied in 2023 who were waiting till 2025. I'm not sure how the data is recorded but I imagine it's being manipulated when the stats turn around (up or down) so rapidly.

Statistics are collected for within 20 weeks, between 20-52 weeks, and over 52 weeks. Both including and excluding the lawful exceptions.

My thoughts are that EHCPs aren’t going to have the power they once had once the White Paper becomes legislation. Teaching assistants are being laid off, and this will increase once 1-1 provision ceases to be a requirement. I think the idea is there will be a parallel nurture based curriculum for children who can’t access mainstream lessons are EHCPs will be there to show what support the child may need.

I saw an article (on special needs jungle I think) and Norfolk had tried to claim all their overdue EHCPs had a legal exception 🤣

This!!

It makes a mockery of the system of collecting the statistics. Yes, Norfolk only had 1 EHCP apparently under is excluding exceptions. What nonsense. It’s nearly as bad as those LAs who supposedly can’t report what placement DC with EHCPs are attending.

I found i could either get my ehcp updated in timescales or get it right. But not both.

I do have concerns about the quality of ehcps where there has been a massive jump in stats.

But 60 weeks is insane when you're trying to teach children who literally cannot cope with a mainstream environment. Children who are a danger to themselves and others on an hourly basis. Or if you have a 3 year old who needs a specialist placement when they start Reception - rarely would additional needs be noted much before then except in the case of disabilities diagnosed at birth. The system is a struggle even when 20 weeks is adhered to.

Post pandemic seems to have had quite the fall in % of councils meeting the deadline. Probably quite understandable with backlog etc... Did anyone have experience with their DC or as a professional meeting EHCPs during that time?

Did your child’s SEND needs genuinely get worse after COVID/lockdowns, or do you think lockdowns just made existing needs more obvious when they returned to school which has led to more reporting?

It was inevitable that the number of EHCPs would go up because the age range was extended to 25, and the criteria from assessment changed from 'probably has Special Educational Needs and the LEA needs or probably needs to determine the child's SEN itself by making a Statement of SEN' to 'has or may have SEN and it may be necessary to make special educational provision through an EHCP' (abbreviations and emphasis mine).

So in the past, if a child left school at 16 and went to a FE college, the Statement of SEN would cease. Now, many children in post-16 education continue their EHCPs. Those who are post-19 with EHCPs tend to have higher support needs.

Add to that the fact that many schools are trying to adopt behaviour policies akin to the Michaela School and using behaviour hubs for low level disruption, resulting in increased anxiety in young people who have otherwise manageable SEN, and you get an increase in EHCPs simply because schools don't meet needs.

@scoopofmintchocchipicecream I don’t despute it’s a legal requirement.

But context matters and the landscape it was first created in - is very different now due to the volume of plans.

The law element has given parents an expectation for some thing the system doesn’t have capacity for. And so it has literally just imploded.

We often think of the law as something fixed and solid. This isn’t the case with SEND law. It's been sculpted in real time. Through multiple legal challenges and tribunals which have continually reshaped what councils have to do

Ordinary everyday phrases like "access to" or "opportunities to" have gradually become legally inadequate, forcing councils to adapt as the interpretation of the law evolves.

That gap between legal expectation and operational reality has created misery for everyone: parents waiting, children without support, and professionals trying to administer a system that began life carrying the enormous task of converting thousands of Statements into EHCPs while implementing an entirely new framework. It started on the backfoot and has never got better.

@Clarsh 60 weeks is insane and it is not what I am advocating for - it was an illustration to show how far from reality 20 weeks for a plan is from the capacity of the system is.

My last (maybe not last point) is EHCP’s were only ever meant to be one side of the coin. The other side was a vision for a more inclusive educational environment- (that has its roots far back in 1978 and the Warnock Review. And in terms of how successful that it - well that has a much more spiky profile when you pull back and look at the bigger picture.

In our TikTok, angry, polarized society people seem to congregate around a bad news story. Nothing happens in a vacuum. and within SEN there is such negativity and very real despair and anguish that surrounds EHCP’s. If we continually rehash what we know - that the system doesn’t work - all that gets amplified is the dysfunction and that blocks honest and open conversations that will enable radical change.

Maybe the SEN reforms will bring a fresh creative energy? Maybe it will be horrifyingly worse? It appears that changing laws is easier than building a SEN system that works for most of the children, most of the time.