Got the EHCP we wanted, now what?

[Ahhhcantthinkofag00dname]

Hello
Following our appeal of the contents of sections b and f of our son’s EHCP, the LA conceded and accepted our proposals, sending me a “first amended EHCP” (dated 19th December) just before the court hearing, which I agreed to vacate.
My question now is: we (finally) have an EHCP which specifies speech and language therapy but the LA say they now need time to arrange this. Apparently they have to contact the health authority over which they “have no jurisdiction” and which has in recent times denied my son needs speech and language input. If the health authority agrees to carry out the provision it’s sorted, but if they don’t, the LA will have commission the therapy. They have no idea how long this will take. What are my rights in this situation? I’ve waited nearly two years for speech therapy and am keen it doesn’t drag out any longer. Thanks!

I have to warn you that ds2 (who has an EHCP with nearly 16 hours of SALT specified in it to be delivered by LA SALT) has had no direct speech and language therapy. Admittedly he can talk very well and is articulate etc. But all the areas identified in his EHCP (difficulties with social communicatiton, receptive language, literal thinking, expressing his thoughts on paper..) well nothing has happened at all. Tbh he has done all his SALT work by participating in drama club and making a friend, and enjoying and participating in lessons.

SALT seems to be one of the first things to be dropped from the menu. They signed him off after a year and a half as needing no further SALT intervention. And he had had NO intervention, it was unbelievable. At that point I just was glad to see the back of the bureaucratic process. Whereas the OT liasion was very helpful and lots of hours actually put in directly benefiting ds, although no-one was working with him on physical skills exactly.

I'm sorry I am not being very helpful.. My advice is...try and get your own SALT organised, and keep the school aware of his SALT needs, over and above what you think they have organised in the EHCP is there any social communication groups? Do they require some funding to get overseen or planned by outside advisor..are they asking the LA for the money? How are his needs going to be met without the SALT?

The LA are not allowed to delegate matters relating to health to the health authority, they are responsible for ensuring that your ds gets his SALT, in one form or another. In our LA's case they got out of it by declaring he was "cured" of his SALT problems, and to some extent that has been true, but only because the school provided many indirect SALT opportunities and we provided the rest.

In RL this may drag on for much longer than you think unless you see a solicitor who threatens some form of legal action. Having seen how little direct SALT actually did for ds (we earlier paid for some private SALT..and used this evidence in his EHCP request) and how much more important modelling social interaction has been and improving his confidence, and therefore his desire to communicate effectively and calmly...well I'm not so sure direct 1;1 SALT works.

However, your child may have entirely different needs, and be much younger, if so my advice is a bit irrelevant, apart from the school bit! What are school expecting to happen and what do they need to make it happen? Get them on board.

You should give them around a month to arrange it, then point out that they have delayed your child getting the therapy she needs too long already by pointlessly opposing your appeal, and that if they don't confirm within a week that they have arranged SALT to start without delay you will have to take judicial review proceedings.

If they still fail to do it, contact a solicitor or SOS SEN to do an official pre action letter (SOS SEN will be much cheaper but just as effective). It's highly likely they'll cave in in response to that, but if you do have to begin court proceedings they will be in your child's name and you will therefore get legal aid.

Thanks for the responses.

My son is 7 and has verbal dyspraxia and ASD. His speech and language needs are mainly to do with the fact he still has speech production problems and is unintelligible some of the time. He has had private therapy since he was 3, but I want him to have therapy delivered in school which his LSA can observe so she can then implement his daily practice effectively. This is now all in the EHCP (after a lengthy battle)!

I sense we will have to fight some more to get provision implemented. Helpful to have the pointers on legal steps to take from here, thanks!

Nettle - my son gets some one to one support in school and daily speech practice, we are happy with the school and they have been supportive of our appeal. Their issue is they have not been able to access specialist speech and language input as health service are too overstretched and they do not have the funding to buy it in. As I understand the onus is now on the LA to commission the speech therapy specified on the plan

Event the threat of legal action won't address the main issue, which is a serious lack of speech and language therapists. The are quite poorly paid, they either quit early or move to private once established, and even then tend to be working at capacity making commissioning nearly impossible.

Might gain more traction if you have the LA agree to grant a payment to you so that you can commission it yourselves. Sound out your case worker, who will say it isn't really allowed, but he/she will ask.

The point is that if the LA can't arrange this via the health service, they can source them from the private sector. So the threat of legal action would certainly be effective.

Thank you, will give the LA till mid / late jan and if it seems as if not much is happening start (threat of) legal action