Do you know how to ensure your child, with Special Educational Needs, achieves their potential at school?

By Rebecca Watson

As a parent, guardian and or carer, we understand how important it is to ensure that your child, no matter what their medical condition and or abilities, has the best possible start in life.

This involves an array of considerations, including the educational provisions any school may be able to offer your child, to allow them to thrive and reach their full potential. Should you have the challenging pleasure of raising a child with special educational needs, finding an appropriate environment and support in either a mainstream setting, and, or a specialist school, to assist with allowing your child to reach their full potential, can be challenging, to say the least.

Educational Health Care Plan

An Educational Health Care Plan (EHCP) is a legal document tailored to meet the needs for a child and or young person aged between 0 -25 years of age.

An EHCP is designed to identify the individuals specific educational, health, and social care needs. In addition if executed correctly, it should explain the additional provisions and or reasonable adjustments that the school are to provide, to help meet that individuals needs, to allow them to get the most out of their education, which should ideally allow that child and or young person to achieve their goals.

Unfortunately, obtaining, maintaining and the implementation of an EHCP is not always straight forward, and parents of Special Educational Needs Children can sometimes feel unsupported by not only their school but their local authority, especially when issues pertaining to provisions as to how best support your child are met with road blocks pursuant to the funding of those provisions, which from a parental perspective is understandably, an unreasonable justification as to why not to assist any child, let alone a vulnerable one.

There is legislation, guidance and policies which are worth taking into consideration in the first instance, which are designed to help your child with special educational needs, such as:

• The SEND Code of Practice 2015

• Children and Families Act 2014

• Equality Act 2010

• Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014

• Your Schools SEND and Admissions Policy

As a starting point, we would recommend approaching your school in the first instance to discuss any issues and concerns you believe your child is experiencing. We would also recommend that you follow up any conversation in writing, and or, keep a record of their progress and any issues that they encounter with any potential triggers, where appropriate, so that this may be looked into by a relevant professional should it be necessary to do so.

Here at Hartlaw LLP we can help you in obtaining an assessment of your child’s educational health care needs, and or assist you in amending the contents of an EHCP, when preferred outcomes and or the implementation of an EHCP does not go according to plan, with supportive evidence, to ensure that it is accurate, precise as possible, and fit for purpose.

In addition to special educational needs and EHCPs, we can also help with admissions, exclusions, bullying, discrimination and judicial reviews. Please contact Rebecca Watson on 01937 547024 or email rebeccaw@hartlaw.co.uk for more information.

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