For those who don’t know an EHCP is an Educational Health Care Plan. Some might lead you to believe it is a golden ticket to education for SEN children and they get showered with gold. If you deem a golden ticket meaning that non typical children get their health, emotional, physical, safety and educational needs written up in a formal document so they can be met then I guess those people would be right. For parents like me it’s a document that supports their child’s basic human rights going into education.
Anyway, let’s not get into that.
Like I said this document takes into account every aspect of a non typical child’s needs and puts measures in place to make sure they are supported during their education. Once it is awarded (which takes plenty of time and effort from all parties) it is then reviewed annually. It includes things like the ratio of care they require, physical adaptations, equipment they require, how they learn, their emotional responses to things (or lack of), their stamina, eating/drinking guidelines, communication support, toileting needs… literally every aspect of them as a person needs to be documented.
We initially submitted Freddie’s to our quadrant in December, however they said that they didn’t receive the correct paperwork (system glitch on their part – don’t even get me started) in order to trigger the process so we had to resubmit in January. No matter where you live the guidelines are the same but sadly the process and length does seem to vary a great deal County to County. It’s a bit of a post code lottery, same as anything in the health and SEN world. Unfortunately, for us, we live in one of the highest tribunal areas for EHCP’s in the Country.
Anyway, I digress.
The process itself should take up to 20 weeks. You trigger the process by submitting the correct paperwork then it takes 6 weeks for the panel to assess the case and decide whether an EHCP can be applied for. If the panel agree it can then a case co-ordinator is assigned and they write to everyone involved in the child’s care and ask for reports which they have 6 weeks to submit to the case co-ordinator. At the same time the CO is instructed an educational psychologist is also instructed to carry out an assessment the child.
In Freddie’s case his requests have been issued to his SALT, physio, OT, Consultant, epilepsy nurse and a community paediatrician. I believe his community nurse should’ve received something too but she says she hasn’t (that’s for me to chase). His nursery also contributes. On top of that he has already had an assessment with the physical needs inspector (PNI) from the Council. She has also been out to do an assessment of his chosen school (thankfully I pushed for this prior to the pandemic otherwise it would be difficult to get that aspect all sorted now).
As you can imagine that is a lot of paperwork. Everybody is of the opinion Freddie will require 1-2-1 care. Obviously we agree. We are lucky that we’ve already been able to read two reports written by people who have know him for years and understand his needs and abilities extremely well. At the end of the day, when you’re trying to ensure your child’s needs are met and they receive the support they need it is helpful to have people who know him really well. It can be a daunting task trying to think of everything yourself especially when you’re not used to a school environment and you’ve never been through the EHCP process before.
Going back to the process, in theory, Freddie’s EHCP should’ve been tied up by the end of May but needless to say it hasn’t been. His outcomes meeting will be scheduled for the end of this month (July) we’re still waiting for the exact date. To my knowledge most reports have been written and returned now. The outcomes meeting is when we get to see the first draft of the document drawn up about Freddie’s education and what they recommend needs to be in place. Normally everyone involved in his care would be present and we’d go through it together making amendments. It’s unlikely this will happen because of the current climate. James and I might just be emailed the document to go through ourselves, make amendments and then return.
We have Freddie’s school place secured providing we can get this document tied up for his care. I am starting to worry whether mainstream school is the right place for him. For two reasons really;
Firstly, to me Freddie is normal, I have no other children to compare him too and I provide his care day in day out. Although it has dawned on me recently how many changes and provisions will need to be put into place in order for a mainstream school to look after him. They will need to provide a curriculum that can be adapted for him. He needs a lot of repetition to get used to routine and it can be hard to engage his attention if he decides he’s not interesting in what you’re offering. That is something I’ve been particularly trying to work during these months with him being at home.
Secondly is a new issue, one which in February would never have crossed my mind. Freddie has always loved nursery. His feedback and reports always confirm that he is happy and easy going. Not only that but he had made friendships and his peers would fight to sit next to him and play with him. After months of him being at home with James and I we’ve noticed his behaviour has changed. He’s become so dependant on us and so used to our company that he screams if he’s left alone. He also gets very loud and unhappy if we try and engage in something he doesn’t want to engage in. My fear here is that he will struggle to transition into a brand new environment with strangers. It goes without saying I will be heavily involved in his transitioning but, that might not be a good thing as he will likely only let me near him the way he currently is. The next fear I have, which is bigger, is that the other children might be scared of him. I could understand it, a child different to them, who they don’t understand, being loud and unhappy. Although that would then be detrimental to why we wanted him at a mainstream school in the first place which was because he’s social and benefits from being around neurotypical kids. These kids might not want to be around him if they’re scared of him.
In February we were completely confident in our choices and we could see how it would work. More importantly, how it could beneficial not only to Freddie but to his potential classmates. Feeling uncertain now isn’t nice. Especially as school is so close. I guess we just need to go through the outcomes meeting and continue to make the best decisions we can for Freddie. In all honestly it’s really difficult to know what that is when we don’t know what the Country will look like week to week and we won’t know how this time has impacted Freddie until we try to come out of it.
I know this is a my usual jumble and muddle, that’s only because I haven’t given any update on the process as we’ve gone. Probably for your own benefit to be honest, most of it would’ve been swearing, tears and moaning that a co-ordinator STILL hadn’t been assigned. I know that’s not very productive if you’re going through the process, or waiting to start. Hearing about people moaning that’s it’s rubbish and long winded is unhelpful. I am pleased I can say that once it started moving things move quite quickly and you feel like progress is being made. That’s the positive.
