The LA must seek advice from a range of people. The list is set out in Regulation 6(1) of the Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014 (the “SEN Regs”):
1.the child’s parent or the young person;
2.educational advice (usually from the head teacher or principal);
3.medical advice and information from a health care professional;
4.psychological advice and information from an educational psychologist;
5.advice and information in relation to social care;
6.advice and information from any other person the local authority thinks appropriate;
7.where the child or young person is in or beyond year 9, advice and information in relation to provision to assist the child or young person in preparation for adulthood and independent living; and
8.advice and information from any person the child’s parent or young person reasonably requests that the local authority seek advice from.
The LA is legally required to seek all of this information as a minimum
(Under section 8 above, if your child has autism, I would say a reasonable request would be to ask the LA to seek advice from SLT, OT and an autism specialist teacher.)
All the professional reports should identify all of the needs the child has (which will go in Section B of the plan) and there should be provision to meet each one of these needs (which will go in Section F of the plan).
The provision should be very specific and say who should be doing what, how long for and when.
For example you might have a Speech and Language Therapy report which says "X has great difficulties with social communication." This would go into Section B of the EHCP. The SLT might go on to say "X needs a social skills programme devised and delivered by a qualified Speech and Language Therapist for one hour each week." This would go into Section F of the Plan. Clearly this is very specific and no one should be in any doubt as to what should be happening. If the report just said "regular access to SLT," that would be wide open to interpretation and very difficult to enforce.
You should be given copies of all the reports and if any of them are are vague and woolly and use phrases like "requires access to", "would benefit from," "regular" "high level of" tell the LA they are not acceptable and they need to go back to whoever wrote the reports and make them more specific.
Information here:
www.ipsea.org.uk/ehc-needs-assessments
www.ipsea.org.uk/what-to-do-when-you-receive-your-draft-ehc-plan
www.ipsea.org.uk/Handlers/Download.ashx?IDMF=afd8d11f-5f75-44e0-8f90-e2e7385e55f0