Advice for EHCP person centred planning meeting

[yazzy85]

We have our son's person centred planning meeting for what will go in his ECHP for starting reception in September.

He has autism, although still waiting on our panel date for diagnosis. He attends nursery with 1:1 support. He has both communication/speech and behaviour/social difficulties.

This is our first meeting with all the professionals for his EHCP draft. I would like some advice on what to expect and anything I need to prepare or questions to ask. It's making me nervous just thinking about all this and how he will cope at school

I think you could be pioneer here, yazzy. There can't have been too many of these meetings yet, and I suspect every local authority runs them differently.

Hi, we had ours some weeks ago. We didn't really know what to expect. At the time we didn't even know whether the LEA was going to issue a EHCP or not. When we got there the the SeN officer just handed us a copy of the draft! that's how we found out they were going ahead with it!
IPSEA later told me it was very wrong of the LEA to proceed that way.

It was 2 hours of going through almost every point of the document. Both my DH and I found very confusing and pointless to be honest as we were not prepared at all for this. I hope yours is much more positive.

When we received the second draft we arranged a meeting with the SeN officer and that was much more useful as we were prepared for it.
I hope yours is a bit more constructive.

Tambaboy thanks for sharing that, we were sent a draft copy of the ehcp beforehand and our meeting is scheduled for an hour and a half so I think they will go over the plan with us too. What I don't understand is why so many different people are going to be present, we have the educational psychologist and area senco and nursery senco and possibly speech therapist too. They have all already submitted their own reports for the ehcp. Just seems a bit overwhelming!

Icimoi I know you mean, its all new this year, fingers crossed that there are more people like Tambaboy who had them done very early

I suspect part of the reason for so many people attending, is that they have all been told by their managers they have to find one of these meetings to attend, so they gain experience.

However, one of the guiding principals around the move from Statements to EHCPlans is exactly the point, that everyone who knows the child (ie, the 'Team around the Child') work together to make sure the ECHPlan really does meet the child's needs. Usually Statements were put together by clerical people who had neer met the child. The idea behind this, is that you get multiple opportunities to input / have your say, and it is a better document because of that.

My LA was a pathfinder, so we started last year with the PCP meeting taking place in October. We had everyone who was involved with ds present (not many as he's home educated so no school involvement), and we spent two very informal hours talking about ds, his strengths and weaknesses, and what support he needed to make progress. Everyone was asked to contribute and for each section of the proposed plan we had a flipchart page and we all wrote notes on Post Its to add. After that, the coordinator from SEN team took them all back and used them as a basis for writing up the first draft.

The headings were:

Who's here?
What we like and admire about ds
What's important to ds now?
What is important to ds in the future?

and Actions sections on:

Friendships, Relationships and Community
Communication
Health
Education and Learning
Independence

I found it useful because it gave an opportunity to dispel myths and stereotypes, where some people had made assumptions about ds that weren't applicable. It was very helpful to have detailed conversations to put these things straight.

We're still waiting to have the document finalised. My LA is keen to that it should be spot-on accurate before it's signed off.

Thanks streakybacon that gives me a better idea of what to expect. I agree BackforGood it does make sense that the people who work with him should all be there.

I'd advise that you double check that everyone you ask to be invited has been. I sent lists to the SEN team but when they arranged the date they hadn't written to some of the people I wanted there. It's worth taking the responsibility for yourself to contact those people and ask if they've been invited. Some LAs are a bit sneaky, and a bit of forward planning can make all the difference.

They're supposed to have all those people there because it's meant to be a person-centred, holistic, multi-disciplinary and several other buzzwords process. In practice I think you're lucky, in many areas I think LAs are finding it virtually impossible to set up these meetings properly because it's so difficult to pin down dates when everyone can be available.

I went to one yesterday. The idea behind it is good, but in practice it's even more bureaucratic than the statementing process. It took a couple of hours and the schools and the parent were completely on the same page - likely to take even longer if there are disagreements I would have thought.

Definitely read the draft EHCP through first and have your comments ready as it can be hard to think on the spot.

We had one last year. What helped was having the professions there. We said we want x y z provision and a professional backed us e.g. school said she needs full time support and autism outreach agreed. After meeting LA had to agree provision and initially said not sure we will agree to fund. I said how will you defend that decision at tribunal given all your professionals agreed it was needed at the meeting. They finally agreed it