Education Health and Care Needs Assessments and Plans
We can provide you with information and practical advice about the Education, Health and Care Needs Assessment (EHCNA) process, and about Education, Health and Care Plans (EHC Plans).
This advice covers existing plans, as well as the assessment and review processes.
- Education, Health and Care Plans
- Education, Health and Care Needs Assessments
- Asking for an EHC Needs Assessment
- EHCNA requests for young people aged over 16
- The EHCNA process
- Re-assessment of needs
Education, Health and Care Plans
An Education Health and Care Plan (EHC Plan) can only be issued after a child or young person has gone through the process of an Education, Health and Care Needs Assessment (EHCNA).
An EHC Plan is a legal document written by a local authority to describe a child or young person’s Special Educational Needs (SEN), the support they need, and the outcomes they would like to achieve.
The special educational provision described in an EHC Plan must be provided by the child or young person’s local authority. This means an EHC Plan can give a child or young person extra educational support. It can also give parents and young people more choice about which school or other setting the child or young person can attend.
The Council for Disabled Children (CDC) have produced a helpful video:
Education, Health and Care Needs Assessments
An EHCNA is a full investigation of the education, health and social care needs of a child or young person. It is the first step towards getting an EHC Plan written for the child or young person, but it is not guaranteed that an EHCNA will always lead to an EHC Plan being agreed. In York they sometimes call these assessments ‘RSAs’ (Request for Statutory Assessments).
An EHC Plan is statutory, which means by law the plan must be written and updated in a certain way and the additional support for a child or young person with SEN described in the plan must be provided.
The arrangement of an EHCNA and EHC Plan is a legal process under the Children and Families Act 2014, and is carried out by the local authority where a child lives. The process can take up to 20 weeks and can be applied for at any time by a young person (aged 16-25), a parent/carer or a nursery/school/college setting.
Guidance on EHCNAs is set out in the SEND Code of Practice (Chapter 9).
The EHCNA brings together information about:
- what the child or young person can and cannot do
- the support they need
It includes information from:
- you
- your child or young person
- the nursery, school or college
- other professionals who work with or support your child or young person
A child or young person (aged between 0 and 25) will usually have an EHC Plan if they need more help, or a different kind of help than a mainstream nursery, school or college or can normally provide.
Your child’s nursery, school or college may already be giving your child help without an EHC Plan. This is called SEN support. This means that the nursery, school or college makes additional or different provision from that provided to most other pupils to meet their needs and help them learn. Sometimes other professionals will give advice or support to help your child learn.
If you're concerned that your child is not making expected progress, despite already having some SEN support in place at school, or if you feel that not enough is known about your child's SEND and what support they might need, then you could consider asking for an EHCNA.
Asking for an EHC Needs Assessment
The following people can request the local authority to make an EHCNA:
- a parent or carer
- the young person themselves, if they are between 16 and 25 years of age
- your child or young person’s nursery, school or college (usually the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Coordinator (SENDCO) makes the request for an EHCNA)
You don’t need to ask for the nursery, school or college's permission or agreement if you want to ask for an EHCNA, but it does help to work together with the educational setting to make sure the local authority get as much information as possible to help them decide whether to agree to an assessment or not. If you make a parental request for assessment, the local authority will still contact the setting to ask for any extra information they have.
Parental requests for statutory Education Health Care Needs Assessments can be made via email: sendept@york.gov.uk or by post:
SEN Services TeamWest Offices
Station Rise
York
YO1 6GA
When you request an EHCNA you need to send in any extra information which will help to support your application.
The two part legal test the local authority will use to decide whether or not to agree an EHC needs assessment is:
- The child or young person has or may have special educational needs;
And
- It may be necessary for special educational provision to be made for the child or young person in accordance with an EHC plan.
It is important in your request that you try to cover how you think your child or young person meets the legal test, for example extra support they have at the moment, attendance or behaviour needs, diagnoses, attainment and progress data showing how their learning is, etc. This information should be recent as the local authority won’t consider out of date information.
Don’t send original documents as they may not be sent back to you.
Find out more about EHC Needs Assessments on the contact website.
EHCNA requests for young people over 16
If your young person is aged between 16 and 25, they can ask for an EHCNA themselves.
The process is the same for young people as it is for parents, and they can send a letter or email to make the request. They can do that themselves or with help from you or another trusted adult.
As their parent or carer you can also be invited to take part in the assessment. Your young person should add your details and main contacts, both family and involved professionals to the letter.
If your young person is between 16 and 25 and is unable to apply for an EHCNA themselves, you can do it on their behalf. This would be necessary if your young person is unable to make informed decisions about their education and future. This would usually be the result of a decision regarding their mental capacity, their ability to make a specific decision at a specific point in time. Most of the time it’s a young person’s parent or carer that decides whether they’re able to make decisions.
If you’re not sure whether your young person can make decisions about an EHCNA, get advice from your child’s GP, or see further information about mental capacity and decision-making.
The EHCNA process
Once you have requested an EHC Needs Assessment, the local authority have 6 weeks to tell you if they agree to the assessment or not. During the 6 weeks they will contact the education setting your child or young person is on roll with to ask if they have any extra information about the child or young person’s needs and the support they require. They will also contact anyone else you have asked them to in your request.
If the local authority decide not to assess, a SEN Caseworker will contact you to explain why and you will get a letter giving you the right to appeal this decision if you choose to. You might also decide an EHCNA is not needed or choose to gather more evidence and make a new request for EHCNA at another time instead.
If the local authority decide to assess, a SEN Caseworker will contact you to discuss next steps. This will include them contacting Health, Social Care and Education settings and letting the Educational Psychology Service know that they need to contact you to arrange their part of the assessment.
Up to 10 weeks after the decision to assess, the SEN Caseworker will be in touch again to tell you if the local authority have agreed to write an EHC Plan (called issuing an EHC Plan) or not. If the local authority decide not to issue, a SEN Caseworker will contact you to explain why and you will get a letter giving you the right to appeal this decision if you choose to. You might also decide an EHCP is not needed or choose to gather more evidence and make a new request for EHCNA at another time instead (but you must wait at least 6 months before doing this.)
If the local authority decide to issue an EHCP, the SEN Team will draft an EHC Plan to share with you and it is important to tell the SEN Caseworker which education settings your child or young person wants to attend so they can send the draft to those settings too and ask for a place (called consultation). You have 15 days to respond to the draft and can ask the SEN Caseworker for a Co-ordinated Planning Meeting (CPM) to discuss this if helpful to you. It is very important to check the draft plan carefully to make sure you understand it and that it is clear and accurate.
The final EHC Plan will have a setting in Section I and all of the information used to write the plan in Section K. If you are not happy with the final EHC Plan, either the contents of it or the setting named, the letter that comes with it will give you your right to appeal this at SEND Tribunal if you choose to.
The process of assessment is outlined on the York Local Offer website including a handy week by week guide so you can know exactly what to expect.
Re-assessment of needs
You can ask for re-assessment of your child or young person’s needs. This is helpful if their needs have changed significantly since the EHC Plan was first issued, the professional advice used to write the plan needs to be updated, or the provision is no longer meeting needs.
The IPSEA website contains useful information about requesting re-assessment of a young person's needs, including a template letter.
See more information about Re-assessments of EHC Plan in the SEND Code of Practice (sections 9.186 to 9.192).