Our LA has agreed to carry out an EHC needs assessment but when we asked for it to get advice from a local specialist service, it said no because there is a really long waiting list.

When a local authority (LA) agrees to carry out an education, health and care (EHC) needs assessment, it is agreeing to get advice and information from a set list of professionals. This is set out in Regulation 6(1) of The Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014 (The SEND Regulations 2014) and includes anyone the child’s parent/young person ‘reasonably requests’.

This means if you have asked your LA to get advice and information from a specialist service such as Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), speech and language therapy service, occupational therapy service, physiotherapy service, or anyone else, then your LA is under a legal duty to ask the professional for advice as long as your request is reasonable. 

When an LA asks a health service for advice and information as part of an EHC needs assessment, the health service must provide it within six weeks. This is set out in Regulation 8 of The SEND Regulations 2014. We are aware that LAs sometimes receive a response from the service to say there is a long waiting list, so they are unable to provide the advice. However, SEND Regulation 8 also sets out the very limited reasons why a delay could be allowed, and a long waiting list is not one of them.

Your local health authority and LA are expected to work together to make sure that advice requested for an EHC needs assessment can be provided on time. However, your LA has the overall legal duty to meet all the deadlines during the EHC needs assessment process and issue a final EHC plan on time. If a professional/service your LA has contacted is genuinely unable to provide their advice on time, your LA should consider alternative ways of getting the advice (such as getting an independent report). 

SEND Regulation 6(1) says the information and advice provided must be about your child’s special educational needs (SEN), the special educational provision they need and the outcomes it is hoped they will achieve. If your LA receives a response stating your child is “not known to this service”, or similar, then it will need to go back to the professional/service concerned to make sure they provide proper advice about your child’s needs, provision and outcomes.

It is very important that the EHC needs assessment is carried out properly, because if all of your child’s needs are not fully identified at this stage, the LA may decide (wrongly) that an EHC plan is not necessary, or it might issue an EHC plan which does not fully meet your child’s needs. If your LA is refusing to get the information and advice you have requested, or is not carrying out the EHC needs assessment properly in any other way, you should write to the LA using our template letter.

If the LA continues to say no to seeking advice from CAMHS or another professional you have asked them to obtain advice from you should consider taking action. Find out more about taking action when things go wrong with a local authority.