EHCP: appeal against LA refusal. Anyone been successful?

[notaflyingmonkey]

DS has had a statement since he was four when diagnosed with autism. He is now 15 and transitioning into 6th form. The annual review went badly, and the LA have refused to issue an EHCP, which means he is on his own.

I am appealing their decision, but have no clue about what that will mean. Has anyone had experience of this? Do you need legal representation? (If there are existing threads on this, sorry, I had a look and cound't find them).

Personally I think the truth of the matter is budget cuts have made the process become adversarial. Not parents or even the LA - but they are the 2 parties fighting it out at the centre of a bigger picture.

My Ds doesn't have a secure named school place due to anxiety and even that isn't enough for the la to think he needs an EHCP. This has been since June. It goes to show how bad it really needs to get before they issue an EHCP in some cases.

In my LA the system is adversarial, evidence of this is that every single parental request for an EHCP last yr was refused!!

Many parents went to appeal some went allmthe way to tribunal, all of them won their appeals or were conceded!

In my LA children are being failed everyday before any support is put into place, particular children with autism.

Its very sad but it is real

For goodness sake, zzzz, I'm not here to "serve" anyone, and I really don't understand why you take such offence at someone making straightforward factual statements. There is nothing adversarial about someone wanting a statement to be converted into an EHCP, which after all is precisely what the government said they expected to happen under the new legislation; and if a child needs an EHCP, then it would be very unwise for his parents to leave it and trust to the school maybe having enough money to provide the sort of support he previously had under a statement, because it just isn't there.

I was obviously misunderstanding what you meant by "serve", zzzz, as it read as if it was suggested I had appointed myself to serve members of this board or tell them what to do, and for that I apologise. Absolutely I want to help, which is why I didn't want people to be misled by inaccurate information, particularly the misconception about funding.

I won't take this further except to refer to one further point which I omitted to mention - namely that appealing against this decision rather than making a new request for an EHCP is to your advantage, OP, because by appealing you ensure that the statement remains in place till the appeal is dealt with. If you left it and waited to see how things go, the statement would come to an end and you would have to start the entire process off from the beginning with a request for assessment which would probably be refused, and which would lead to major delay during which your child would still have inadequate support.

In my LA, all students with Statements are being converted to EHC Plans. At the start of the conversion process, parents are sent a letter asking for their consent to convert and as far as I know, only a handful of parents have declined to consent and have taken this point to ask for the Statement to cease. It is certainly not the case that all LA's are using the conversion process to stop support, as ours isn't.

HI
MY DAUGHTER IS 1OYEARS OLD AND SHEHAD BRAIN TUMOUR SURGEY AND SHE IS SUFFERING FROM RARE GENETIC DISEASE ANS HE HAS GOT VISION PROBLEM AND HAS BEEN REFUSED FROM EHC PLAN AND WHEN I CONTACT THEM BACK THEY SAID THAT ALL THE CONSULTANTS SAID THAT SHE DONT NEED EHC PLAN BECAUSE THEY THINK SHE IS FINE AND WHEN I ASKED ALL HER DOCTORS THEY DO NOT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT IT ,
HAS ANYBODY GOT EXPERIENCE ABOUT THIS PLEASE.

Hi Marissaaziz
I am sure there are lots of people here who can help but it would be best to start your own new thread. Give some extra details too - did you or school apply? What date did you apply? Have you had a formal letter refusing assessment? Did it include info about mediation? What date is on the refusal letter?