EHCP support thread no. 3

[Phineyj]

A new thread for when no. 2 is full up.
Link to thread no. 1: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/special_educational_needs/4834986-ehcp-support-thread
Link to thread no. 2:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/special_educational_needs/4989146-ehcp-support-thread-no-2

I am the mum of an 11 year old girl with SEN and have spent the last 20 months battling for my local authority to issue an EHCP to support her transition from primary to secondary school. We are currently after draft stage after two tribunals. I've had so much useful advice and moral support from posters on here.

This new thread is here to help everyone, whether you're just starting out or are a battle-hardened veteran of years of this.

There is no such thing as a stupid question and there are many acronyms and technical terms so please ask for an explanation of anything that you don't understand.

SEN: special educational needs (sometimes SEND: special educational needs and disability)
SENCO: teacher at school charged with overall responsibility for students on roll with SEN
ECHNA: education care and health needs assessment - the process of a local authority commissioning reports to find out a child's needs
EHCP: the education care and health plan that details a child's needs and the agreed provision to meet them; a legally binding document
SENDIST: the special educational needs and disability tribunal - an independent appeal panel which considers parental appeals against Education Authority decisions about special educational needs.

Can anyone tell me how a particular educational place/type becomes named at ECHNA stage? Assuming if it’s a school, presumably they need to be happy to name themselves. Then if the parents say the same, who else needs to say that DC needs to attend or continue at the named place?
School setting hasn’t come up in previous SEN assessments for us so none of them name a setting, more the characteristics of a setting they think could work.

@MinnieTruck advice and information from an EP must still be sought as part of the EHCNA. It can be at home or it may be in a clinic or children’s centre. If you want the LA to gather evidence from audiology, ophthalmology, neurology and the epilepsy nurse, you should specifically make the request. For DS, having advice from audiology and ophthalmology will be particularly important.

As she has an EHCP, we have to apply for schools through the SEND team by 30th of September.

This is what your LA would like, but it is not the law. A transition review must be held this term and, legally, you do not have to state your preferred placement until you receive the draft following the review. You also do not need to name more than one placement, name a MS as well as a SS, or complete the LA’s separate form.

@246810k you don’t list you and DH as witnesses.

@EHCPerhaps make sure you request any assessments such as SALT and OT that are needed. IPSEA has a model letter you can use.

A placement is not named during the EHCNA. Following the needs assessment, if the LA agrees to issue, you will receive a draft. At this point, you can state your preferred placement. Unless the school is wholly independent, the school does not need to agree to being named. When the LA finalises, they may or may not finalise naming the parental preference. If they don’t, parents should appeal.

@MinnieTruck to clarify, when I said ”a transition review must be held this term and, legally, you do not have to state your preferred placement until you receive the draft following the review” I meant when you receive the draft following the review meeting. The EHCP doesn’t get finalised and then you state your preferred placement.

@BrumToTheRescue is it okay if I PM you regarding this pls?

@MinnieTruck of course it is.

That’s so helpful. Thank you so much BrumToTheRescue!

My LA evidence deadline was Friday at noon and they haven’t responded. What happens now? I messaged my solicitor and they said they would bring it to the tribunals attention on Monday. Arrgggghhh! Why can’t they just concede and agree to issue!

What happens now?

Probably nothing. The LA will be given another chance. LAs are given chance after chance.

Hi, hoping someone can help! Do I have to respond to the LA’s response to my appeal?

As expected it is lame and reiterates the same old crap that DS can attend a mainstream that he hasn’t attended for months and can’t meet needs.

it hasn’t been made clear to me that a response is expected. Is there any point in responding, I’m falling over myself in evidence that supports my position, seems like a waste of time.

Thanks

An appeal is not a waste of time. The vast majority of parents are successful. The only times you have to submit anything to SENDIST is when the information/dates you received from SENDIST require you to do something. Or if you e.g. want to request amending the hearing date.

No, you don't have to respond. You can if you want to, and if they have said something that is clearly wrong in law or that is contradicted by the evidence it might be worth pointing it out. But you presumably dealt with the argument that your DS can attend the mainstream in your original appeal grounds, so there is no need to repeat it.

If you're in any doubt about what you do and don't have to do, go back to the directions that the tribunal sent out when they registered the appeal. In particular, it's worth checking that the LA has fully complied with the requirements around documents they have to file, including things like witness statements from the school, attendance records, costs etc.

I think @PeaHen99 is suggesting a response might be a waste of time, not the appeal itself.

Ah, on re-reading you are right. I misread.

Hi all, hope you're all doing well (I am the OP of this thread but can only log in as that name on my phone and this is too much to type on there...).

Start of year 7 has gone kind of ok for us. At least, DD has now attended for the 8th day in a row and is showing some signs of being willing to travel independently (it's a train and bus ride, that DH and I are currently doing with her -- not as bad as it sounds as I work at the school).

I have run into an issue though. The EHCP was issued in June and included OT provisions that DD badly needs and which we have been waiting for, for over a year now, due to having to a do a refuse to issue tribunal.

DH and I have not been told what funding the EHCP attracts, although I'm not sure the LA is actually required to tell us that? However, I can see on the school database that there is an allocated amount of funding, which when I cross checked with the LA's published lists of funding bands, is probably Band 3 (no idea if that means anything nationally if if it's just an our LA set of bands).

However, the SENCO said to me yesterday the OT is not funded! How can this be when it's included in the EHCP? The name of the provider was even confirmed to me before the summer break.

I have said to the SENCO privately that if the OT can be provided at school then DH and I are willing to pay so the school's not out of pocket (sadly, I think it's quite likely the LA won't pay them anything, separately to this issue, as I know the same LA owe the school thousands for another child). I actually got a private OT quote back in May but child refused to do it if it was going to be at home...

Anyway, just wondering if it can be legal in any way to include something in an EHCP and then not fund it.

@redgum my DD is similar. You're going to need to push hard. Be polite and persistent. Ask your LA directly for the ECHNA. There may be a form to fill in (we have a portal thing). IPSEA website has a form letter you can send too.

You should trust your gut on this. You're too late in the application cycle to use the EHCP process to get a school named (but that can happen later on). However, decent secondary schools will generally do some extra transition for
DC who are 'in the system'. My school produces in the summer each year, a list of new year 7s who have EHCP, are being assessed for EHCP, or whose primaries say that they have a need for extra transition for whatever reason.

You have got an academic year to progress things. We applied for the EHCNA in October of year 5 and had it by June of year 6, but I had to push push push.

@QuickFetchTheCoffee I'm sorry to hear things are slow. I actually teach at the school named in my DD's EHCP and I am having trouble getting the EHCP provisions put in place. This is despite regular polite chasing of the SENCO and other SEN staff, in person and by email.

I will say as a teacher that September in schools is always a disaster. It seems to come as a complete surprise to everyone every year that stuff is needed for 1st September. Of course if you only start working on stuff on 1st September it is not going to be in place ON 1st September.

I am going to try @Phineyj myself so see if I can get this thread to appear back in my current threads on my phone. I hid it when I was overwhelmed in July and have now hidden it from myself somehow. ARGH!

@Needlenardlenoo funding bands differ depending on the LA. However, rather than focusing on funding, you should focus on the provision detailed, specified and quantified in F. Is OT detailed, specified and quantified in F? Or is it vague and woolly? Look at it carefully because many parents don’t realise the provision is unenforceable until they need to enforce it. For example, does it say “access to”, “would benefit from”, “regular”, “up to”, “or equivalent”, “opportunities for”, “as appropriate”, “would be useful/helpful”, “such as”, “e.g.”, “as required”, “as advised”…

If the former, it must be provided and can be enforced. The LA is ultimately responsible and must be funded at an appropriate level so the provision is actually provided. Lack of funding isn’t your concern at this point. Sometimes OT will be funded via a personal budget.

Thanks @BrumToTheRescue.

It says in Section F for Sensory/and or Physical Needs: "The treating occupational therapist will work with CHILD NAME fortnightly followed by termly reviews as described below. This will involve ongoing assessment of her sensory processing needs by providing a programme to support her self-regulation, collaborating and consulting with teaching and support staff and training staff on the benefits of the programme and its implementation to support CHILD NAME's needs.
The treating occupational therapist will create a programme for CHILD NAME to use with support from school staff. CHILD NAME will complete her occupational therapy programme for 15 minutes daily with support by a teaching assistant."

Is that enforceable?

The wording could be tighter. For example, 'fortnightly' but how long are the sessions? They could be 1 minute. Will it be 1:1? What will the 'programme' consist of, 'support staff' could be an admin worker? What ‘training’, which ‘staff' will receive training, what ‘support’, what ‘school staff’, any TA or someone with (specific) training, will it be 1:1? What will the termly reviews consist of, who will be part of them, how long will they last… And while termly reviews are allowed, that doesn’t change the provision in F between then and the AR (or maybe even after the AR depending on if the LA amend or not following the review meeting).

Yes fair enough (I did about 17 pages of suggested corrections to the EHCP draft back in June but thought it was more important to get it in place before year 7 start and they also wouldn't make most of the suggested corrections - so that was a waste of two days!)

But can I enforce the LA actually paying for some OT? How?

If it means I've got to do another tribunal, we might as well cut our losses and just see if we can talk DD into going to some private sessions.

How do you find out if the EHCP requirements are being adhered to in school on a daily basis?

Can you ask for the school to provide evidence that it is being carried out?

My daughter really wants to move all her three children, who all have additional needs, to another school as the SENCo (always off sick) and the headteacher are happy to rake in additional funding and use it elsewhere in the school.

From what we can gather (DGS non verbal) has not had any of the additional help promised on the EHCP as of this academic year.

The school that she approached for a new placement for her children said that they could not meet DGS's needs as there are more than 20 daily recommendations detailed on the EHCP and they don't have the staff. This was before the finalisation of his current EHCP.

My daughter's written recommendations,
which she submitted before the EHCP was finalised, were omitted in the final draft despite being promised that they would be included.

My daughter has asked the headteacher for an immediate early review of the EHCP (because the SENCo went sick after half a day in school last week) which now has to wait until the SENCo returns to school.

My daughter feels that the school have done absolutely nothing for her three children and is convinced that her relationship with the school has irretrievably broken down.

How can we find a school that will take them after the one already approached wouldn't accept DGS? (They have admitted that they have spaces in the year groups required.)

I don't think it is all easy to find what's actually being carried out. I mean, I can't get that information and my DD's in the school where I teach...

It would take a Subject Access Request I think (which would be well worth doing for a non verbal child where you plan to change the school anyway).

MyOtherCarIsAPorsche sometimes it is obvious something isn’t being provided. DD can ask the school, but they don’t have to provide her with proof. A communication book can sometimes help. For therapy sessions or other outside professionals, it can help to have a summary email written in to the provision. Sometimes other DC let you know snippets of information. And it isn’t relevant to your case but for some DC give a blow by blow run down.

DD also needs to look carefully at the EHCP to check if the provision DD thinks should be provided is actually written in a way where it must be provided. If it is vague and woolly, it does not have to be provided.

If DD wants to move DC with an EHCP, she will need to request an early review from the LA rather than the school. The LA does not have to agree to an early review.

Unless the preferred school is wholly independent, the LA doesn’t need them to agree to being named. Following the next review, if the LA amends, DD will get the chance to state her preferred placement and the LA must name it unless the LA can prove:
-The setting is unsuitable for the age, ability, aptitude or special educational needs (“SEN”) of the child or young person; or
-The attendance of the child or young person would be incompatible with the provision of efficient education for others; or
-The attendance of the child or young person would be incompatible with the efficient use of resources.

Did DD appeal when the current EHCP was finalised?

Needlenardlenoo whether it is enforceable will depend on the wider wording - I presume there is more because it says “as described below”. As it stands with just what you have posted, the OT (who may not actually have any sensory integration experience) could ‘work with’ DD for 1 minute fortnightly as part of a very large group. You would need someone to look over it as a whole. SOSSEN can help with this or a solicitor. If it is enforceable, you start by reminding the DCS of their duty under section 42 of the Children and Families Act 2014. If that doesn’t work, a pre-action letter. And if that fails, JR.

Oh I see. Goodness, what a waste of time that all was then. Might as well have not bothered.
Thank you though!

It is why the wording is so important because the intent of anyone sensible reading it isn’t only to have 1 minute a fortnight. It is also why so many have to appeal for an enforceable EHCP. It’s a bit like saying you will be paid a salary fortnightly. You would want to know how much.