Can an Educational Health Care Plan (EHCP) do more harm than good?

Now you may be wondering what I’m getting at. I mean, can an EHCP make it harder to get a child with special educational needs (SEN) into school than if they didn’t have an EHCP and got it after?

For those of you who may not know: an EHCP is an assessment plan made by the local authority for children with SEN to get the support, they need at school. You can find out more about this in my post about My SEND 4 year old .

Story Time

The reason I’m asking this question is that before my son received his EHCP it was easy for him to get into a school. But once he got one it was now difficult for a school to admit him.

One of the reasons was that they couldn’t make the necessary adjustments to meet his needs in addition to the needs of the SEN children they already have.

This got me thinking and inspired me to ask the question above. If the school is able to meet the needs of other SEN children, some of whom don’t have an EHCP, what was different about my son?

Was it because they were unable to make the adjustments or was it the inconvenience of having to deal with another child with SEN?

The fact that schools talk about SEN and inclusion on their websites but still make it difficult for some of these children to gain access is a mystery to me. Unless they mean selective inclusion, as in schools can choose which SEN children, they admit based on their EHCPs, unless they’re already in school.

Rejected by Multiple Schools

My son was in fact refused admission by nearly a dozen schools. So, when I say harm, I mean that the plan has kept him out of school rather than helping him get into a school.

Instead, he has made little to no progress at home because he is not getting the support he needs.

He was rejected twice by my preferred school and it was only when I read up on the law on EHCPs that I realized that it was against the law not to determine and secure a placement before finalizing a plan, so I applied for mediation, which is a step before taking it to the tribunal.

A mediation date was set but in the end, the local authority directed my preferred school to admit my son because if they had their way, they wouldn’t have. My son has since been diagnosed with Autism.

A Little Encouragement

Having said all that, I’d like to encourage any parent who is or might be in a similar situation to keep fighting and working with the local authority to get their child into school, even if that means taking it all the way to court.

The process can be draining so do what you have to do to re-energize but do not give up.

And with that, I want to leave you with this:

“You are your child’s best and often only advocate, so do whatever it takes to make sure your child is counted among their peers.”

Rita Yvonne