Introduction
Education, Health and Care Plans are sometimes called EHCs or EHCPs.
They are a plan that focusses on the support and care your child needs. The family/school/college/nursery and health and social care professionals all contributed to the plan. The group of people is sometimes called a multi-agency group. It is designed to make sure that your views are not only heard but also understood.
Who is an Education, Health and Care Plan for?
The Education, Health and Care Plan is for children and young people who have special educational needs (SENs) and/or disabilities.
How do I know if my child is eligible?
Your child’s needs will be assessed by education, health and social care professionals to see if you are eligible for a Education, Health and Care Plans. You can talk to your child’s school, college or nursery about eligibility for an assessment. For example, your school’s special educational needs coordinator (SENco) will be able to help.
How it works
At the start of the assessment, you and your child will get the chance to say what is working, what’s not working and what you think needs to change.
Information will also be gathered from the other people working with your child and a meeting will be arranged. At this meeting you can discuss outcomes and how you think they can best be met.
An EHCP is a partnership between you and the professionals involved.
What happens next?
After the assessment, professionals in the multi-agency group will meet to discuss what support is needed, agree the cost for this, and the timescales. Regular reviews will also be added to the plan, so if there are changes to your child’s support needs then this will be identified in the review.
The plan will be shared with you, and the education, health and social professionals who support your child.
The EHCP assessment and planning is designed to focus on agreeing individual outcomes and the support needed to achieve these. The plan will be tailored to each child’s needs. This could include helping families to make best use of support available.
Further information
Guidance on Education, Health and Care Plans
Easy Read Guide to Educational & Health Care Plans Pages 30 – 36.
An introduction to Educational & Health Care Plans (credit: Department of Health)
Receive an Education, Health & Care Plan and live in East & West Sussex or Croydon?
If you want to have a chat about ECHP’s, call us on 01903 219482, or send an email to [email protected].