Assessment help

[Newtohomeschooling]

I've been home schooling my DS since the end of last year.
I think he has special needs and needs an assessment.
Who do I need to contact at the council to sort this out and will they pay for it?
Thanks

Can you go through the GP - or health visitor if he is very young?

Or, pay to bypass it all and go private.

Do the council not have to do it?

Do you mean that you are after an EHCP (Education, Health and Care plan) for your son? Yes, you can request one while home educating. I don't know much about it as I have yet to do it myself, but I understand that many councils routinely refuse and make parents appeal, in hopes that they will give up. So you may need to do quite a lot of work to get it. Depending on your child's history, I know that it can be harder to prove SEN for a child who hasn't been to school, but it can be done.

I am on the Facebook group "EHCP Experiences England" where there seem to be many people who know what they are doing! Two websites recommended there for beginners are
www.sossen.org.uk/
www.ipsea.org.uk

so that should get you started. First step is to request an assessment, which the LA would pay for. If the LA refuses to assess then you can appeal.

By assessment, do you mean an EHCP? Unless your child is 5 or under and you have a really good children's centre, councils don't tend to assess as far as I know.

If you are talking about an EHCP, it is a bit tricky as a HE'er but certainly not impossible. Although you don't have to have a diagnosis to get an EHCP, it really helps. We went to the GP for referral to CAMHS, waited 2 years, got the diagnosis, also got a private diagnosis for something else that CAMHS doesn't cover, then applied for an EHCP. It is a long process.

However, IPSEA (advice charity) and others have said that you don't have to have a diagnosis to start the EHCP, just plenty of evidence of why the EHCP is needed. I tend to think that my council would have refused to assess with what little evidence I had as a HE parent, but who knows.

As Saracen says, the assessment (if your council agree to assess, which they will tell you within the timeframe allowed) is free, and consists of an Educational Psychologist who observes then writes a report (a very important report that the council pretty much copies and pastes into the EHCP document) and a Paediatrician who meets your child then writes a report on health needs. If you need further assessments, you have to specify that to the council and they should not turn down any reasonable requests. So you can ask for, for example, a speech and language assessment if your child has/might have autism, that sort of thing. But the council usually goes thru the NHS for this so it may be that the assessment isn't done before the EHCP is finalised; this is a real problem and one to watch out for.

We accessed all our assessments for SN through the GP - but we do not want an ECHP, we just wanted a diagnosis.