The Education, Health and Care Needs Assessment
If you think your child might need an EHCNA, you should first discuss this with your child’s school or education setting. Talk to you child’s teacher or the Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator (SENCO) about your child’s special educational needs, progress, and what support is already in place for them. You can also contact SENDIAS for independent advice and support: Westmorland and Furness SEND IAS Service
Requests for EHCNA can be made by parents/carers, young people themselves aged 16 or over, education settings or other professionals. The process is the same regardless of who makes the request. We will need to gather a range of information from your child’s education setting to determine if an assessment is necessary. If parents/carers or education settings make a request for a young person who is 16 or over, the Council requires their consent for the request.
How to submit a parental request for an EHC Needs Assessment
If you wish to make the request yourself, you can use an EHC Needs Assessment sample letter template [WORD, 15KB].
What happens once an EHC Needs Assessment has been requested;
Once the request has been received by the Council, the statutory process begins. The Council must write to you within six weeks of the application being submitted to tell you whether or not the assessment will be carried out.
If the Council determines that an assessment is not required, you can speak to the SEND team in the first instance to understand why this decision was reached. You have a statutory right to request Mediation and to lodge an appeal against the decision with the SEND Tribunal. You can find further information about this on the SENDIASS website: Appealing to Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities (SEND) Tribunal
If the EHCNA is agreed, you will be allocated a SEND Officer who will work with you during the assessment. To help you to gain a better understanding of what is going well and not so well, you will be invited to a Family Conversation.
The Family Conversation is an opportunity to share any information with your SEND Officer about:
- your child
- your family
- you and your child’s hopes and aspirations for their future, and the outcomes they would like to achieve
- the impact your child’s special educational needs have on their daily life, education and access to the wider community
- who supports your child
This is also your opportunity to ask any questions about the process and for your SEND Officer to explain what happens next.
If you prefer, you can share the information with your SEND Officer in writing instead of having a discussion.
The Council will request information from the following:
- you and your child
- health services
- the school or education setting your child attends
- educational psychology advice – we must ensure your child has an educational psychology assessment as part of the process
- social care
- any other agency or service which supports your child, eg Young Carers
- any agency or person which you or your child request, eg your GP
Everyone will have up to 6 weeks to send their advice back to the Council.
When the advice and information has been received, the Council will consider whether to issue an EHCP and inform you of the outcome. The Council must inform you if it does not intend to issue an EHCP by week 14 of the process.
Your SEND Officer will keep you informed of progress throughout this time.
You can also contact your SEND Officer on:
Telephone: 01229 407 403
Email: SEND.WAF@cumbria.gov.uk