EHCP support thread no. 2

[Phineyj]

This is a support thread for anyone at any stage of the EHCP process. I've got an 11 year old girl in year 6 of a mainstream private primary school. I've been seeking an EHCP since she was in year 5, to support her transition to secondary school. She is diagnosed with ASD and ADHD and is working about two years behind age related expectations. Our local authority refused to assess and refused to issue. We are currently in the 11 month wait for a second tribunal which I am hoping (but not sure) will take place before she actually goes to secondary, although I doubt the actual EHCP will be finalised by then. In the meantime I've been enjoying (not) learning all these acronyms and trying to support other people in this journey. In my spare time, I'm a secondary school teacher.

If you, too, are drowning in acronyms and paperwork while finding your local authority (LA) as useful as a chocolate teapot, join your fellow travellers here!

Having spent years supporting parents through the EHCP process I see that isn’t the case. Many parents who post on forums don’t google or learn about the EHCP process.

I would agree with you if this was a legal forum. However it is not. Most people appealing will not be able to quote the law. However the vast majority will still win, especially for refusal to assess, because all they have to demonstrate is why an assessment is needed. Across the board 98.2% of appeals were successful in 2023, ultimately it's not a complex area of law. You also need to remember the tribunal process is designed for litigants in person, who are not expected to be able to quote the law by a tribunal either.

Now how about we get back to the topic in hand, which is actually providing support, which is what most people are here for?

I think it's very hard to learn about the EHCP process effectively.

Firstly, there's lots of acronyms and legal terms. You don't know what you don't know and you kind of hope you're not going to need to find out.

Then there's descriptions of the process, but they bear very little relationship to what actually takes place.

In the SEN Code 2014 there's a flowchart of the process. I've annotated it as I've gone with what happened. It looks like a drunken spider with a four colour Bic wandered around it.

Then there's the fact that people in authority actively discourage you, mislead you and even lie to you.

No-one expects that, not at the outset.

I mean, we've filled a whole thread with nearly 1,000 messages and I only started the thread in mid June.

I disagree, it is always important parents know the law. Unfortunately, DC whose parents who know the law get better support. It shouldn’t be like that but it is. I was providing support by providing the pp with the legal test for an EHNCA.

IPSEA and SOSSEN also think it is important parents not the law surrounding EHCPs otherwise they wouldn’t provide such detail and wouldn’t run courses and webinars for parents about the law and EHCPs.

Different people find different things supportive, I think. I find it quite useful to understand the legal context around the EHCP and a bit of the history.

I'd really recommend IPSEA and the Noddy guide.

IPSEA has all guidance needed to start an appeal, and templates matters for pre action protocol letters, requesting further information etc.

The Noddy Guide has a complete break down of case law by appeal type and issues in case, all neatly summarised in case you need the information to write a witness statement.

That said, it may be hard to find the info, yet 98.2% of parents are still succeeding and many won't have access to either source. There really is nothing to lose by bringing about an appeal whether you know the case law or not 😊

Well we can disagree then. I'm not willing to spend any more time debating this matter.

I was merely responding to your posts.

No, you weren't. If you were, we wouldn't have had this conversation. I explained the rationale for why I had paraphrased, and you continued to nit pick in a very unhelpful way. You provided the legislation, why continue? Actually, the reason is not important. I will not be responding any further.

Yes, I was responding to your posts. It isn’t nitpicking to post the accurate legal threshold and explain why I did when you said sometimes the obvious doesn’t need posting when it does.

Yes, I used the Ipsea guide. It's really helpful.

You need a massive amount of cultural capital to succeed at all this though (or at least enough to recognise that there's something to know).

It worries me how shafted people get who don't have the knowledge, the contacts, the support, the time, the confidence...

It's a deeply unfair system.

@Phineyj, if you haven’t already completed them, have you considered IPSEA’s SEND law courses for parents?

I definitely do not need more unpaid labour on top of my teaching job (thanks though). If I finally extract an EHCP from my council in the summer, I'm happy I know enough now to make it work and if I feel stuck with it I'll probably engage Talking SENse or someone like that.

Oops didn’t realise there was a new thread. Thanks for your response back to me @SearchingForSolitude I did think that was the case but wasn’t 100% sure

There are many very able people posting on this thread, each with different areas of specialist knowledge and experience. Some acquired through volunteering, some acquired through adjacent occupational knowledge, some acquired by swatting up. No one is, or needs to be, right all the time. It is helpful if people can remain open and supportive of each other.

👏👏👏

I think it's very hard to learn about the EHCP process effectively.

Firstly, there's lots of acronyms and legal terms. You don't know what you don't know and you kind of hope you're not going to need to find out.

I agree with you @Phineyj. Going through the EHCP process for DD (who’s 2) is really reminding me of the time when DS (21 months) was in NICU. You spent so much time in there, you knew exactly how the body works, why the body reacted a certain way to meditation and knowing how to use all the medical equipment. I even learned how to check the PH levels of stomach aspirate in order to put milk down DS’ NG tube whilst in SCBU. I seriously thought about training to be a nurse😂

What I’m trying to say is that I can tell from the EHCP process that you really have to get your head around a lot of things. You have to understand all these meanings and certain phrases that should be said to get the support needed. I’m only a few months into the process and I certainly find it difficult to keep up with it all. God knows where I’d be without MN and the pub chat. And that’s before I even discovered this thread existed! Good luck to us all

I agree, lots of helpful, knowledgeable posters on MN.

@MinnieTruck I think you would make a brilliant nurse, but I don’t know how you would find the time!

Very true @Phineyj . And it's not just huge amounts of cultural capital, it's cultural capital x time x emotional capacity to tolerate corporate bullying whilst simultaneously caring for a SEND child.

If I was a headhunter I'd stalk these boards for talent - there are some awesome women posting here. Just think of what that potential could be achieving if it wasn't consumed with defending basic legal rights of children against Kafkaesque burreaucracies.

And we should probably hold occasional minutes of silence for the years shaved off our life expectancies, and the damage done to our mental health, by having our children's rights systematically denied, and then being hit with the double whammy of dealing with the consequences of their unmet needs.

@Cafetabac Kafkaesque bureaucracies describes it perfectly. The most vulnerable suffer while LAs spend vast sums of money defending indefensible cases against unrepresented parents without any serious repercussions.

Draft EHCP meeting today with school SENCO/Class Teacher and LA caseworker. No idea if the content is sufficient, I've had lots of advice about making sure it's specific, measurable, enforceable etc etc, had input from Sendiass and others. Caseworker is amending the draft following our meeting just desperately hoping our preferred provision (specialist provision within mainstream school) will agree they can meet needs from the LA'S consultation and then that the LA agrees. Current mainstream school is going to say they can't meet need (not that the LA will necessarily pay that any attention), visit arranged with preferred placement next week. Little one currently gets fulltime top banding higher needs funding so convincing them of the additional needs hasn't been difficult, but that doesn't mean we end up with the right school.

Haha how kind of you SFS, thank you! You’re right, I’d have absolutely no time to be a nurse let alone have the time to study etc. Maybe in the next life ey.

There’s certainly a lot of knowledge people on MN. I’m forever grateful for all of the advice that I receive on here but especially the advice given within the SN boards

@curlydiamond good luck going forward. Hopefully DC will end up at the right provison that is suitable for them. All the best for the drafting process