EHCP hours

[Amarie321]

Just wondering if anyone has any idea what the criteria is for the amount of hours given on an EHCP.

My daughter's proposed EHCP is 15 hours, I think it should be at least 25. Can't seem to find any sort of criteria or banding for this decision online.

Provison in EHCPs is taken from the evidence, so what does the evidence say?

The 'hours' thing in an EHCP is a bit of a red herring. I was told not to get too bogged down by it. The 'hours' allocated is a funding thing that is ultimately not your concern. What matters is the wording in Section F. If it says: 'DC requires full-time 1 to 1 support throughout the school day in order to....' then that is what the LA/setting must provide.

All support MUST be quantified and specified in Section F. This information will be taken from the reports generated during the needs assessment.

Any wording like 'would benefit from' becomes meaningless. So it should say what support, who is going to deliver it and for how long. This is absolutely key - not the hours allocated. If the funding/hours isn't enough to deliver this, it is for the setting and the LA to wrangle over.

There's some good info here from Ipsea about what a decent EHCP should contain:

https://www.ipsea.org.uk/what-an-ehc-plan-contains

@Toomanyminifigs specifying and quantifying provision in F includes the hours (or full-time as you have used) though. For example, some DC have 15 hrs 1:1 to be used 3hrs every morning. So, hours aren’t just a funding thing and parents should definitely be concerned with what hours are in F.

Sorry. Yes. Maybe I wasn't clear. That's what I meant. In Section F it should of course quantify the hours of any support (eg my DS's EHCP specifies 'an hour of SALT a week, delivered by a person trained in....').

If that section is clearly defined then the LA will find it harder to claim it can be delivered in say 15 hours of funding.

I would also suggest that the OP goes through section F line by line with a highlighter to highlight any wording that is vague/meaningless and compares it to what it says in the needs assessment reports.