How to evidence "may need special educational provision"

[handmademitlove]

Am in the process of applying for an EHCNA. Part 1 is straightforward as they have a diagnosis of ASD. Part 2 is trickier - She is yr9, considered a high achiever, reaching expected levels and no behavioural issues. We have no professional reports as such - diagnosis was short, although I do have a SALT report from that although it is targeted at level needed for diagnosis, rather than educational challenges. She has a really spiky profile and I think needs specific provision relating to certain subjects due to significant issues with inference / language eg english. Her average grades look fine - when you delve deeper, she scores very highly on some areas and poorly on others which gives an okay average grade. She benefitted from one to one support but this was time limited and school are unable to fund for the next two gcse years..

Does anyone have any suggestions of what "evidence" to put in the request to assess? I am guessing my opinion doesn't count for much!

I could request a private ed psych assessment if needed.

What was 1:1 support put in place for? Was it effective? Were targets given for this intervention by the school? This would all be evidence if you can get it.

The 1-1 support was for a very specific area of English. It was effective from dd's point of view in that she felt it helped, but hard to measure impact. I think the issues she has are specifically around language and communication and the standard tests in school do not measure to that level of granularity. I can ask school if they have done any impact evaluation.

You could make SARs to school and the GP/hospital to gather evidence. Send the SALT assessment too.

You don’t need an independent EP assessment at this stage. Unless you are lucky with a cancellation you would be hard pressed to find one with availability any time soon anyway, and you don’t want to delay submitting the EHCNA.

I have asked for her educational record as a starting point, but not sure it will help much as on paper she is doing fine. She rarely sees the GP and was discharged by hospital on diagnosis as "It doesn't affect her" according to the consultant🙄So it is just my word for it at the moment!

Rather than just asking for DD’s education record submit a SAR for all data. This should include emails and things like that. There will be evidence within a SAR e.g. evidence about the 1:1 and why it was necessary.

It isn’t unusual for DC to be diagnosed and then discharged but SARs to GP and hospital could still be of use. For example, the GP will have received clinic letters from hospital assessments or there may be e.g. a comment on her notes about communication and from the hospital there will be notes made that weren’t necessarily included in the clinic letters which may support your request.

@ThomasWasTortured that is helpful thank you. Do you need to submit SAR to the specific department or the hospital trust?

To the hospital trust.

Thank you.