My child has health and social care needs. Can they have an EHC plan?

An EHC plan is a legal document which sets out a child or young person’s special educational needs as well as their related health care and social care needs, along with the provision required to meet those needs. As parents and young people, once an EHC plan is in place you are entitled to rely on it and can legally enforce it.

The first step in getting an EHC plan in place is having an EHC needs assessment carried out.

EHC needs assessments

You can ask for an EHC needs assessment for your child or young person with health/ care needs if:

• they have or may have special educational needs, and
• it may be necessary for special educational provision to be made via an EHC plan.

Your child will need to meet both elements of this threshold to be entitled to an EHC needs assessment. You can find out the meaning of special educational needs and special educational provision on our website.

• If your child has, for example, significant medical needs but does not require any special educational provision, they will not meet the threshold for an EHC needs assessment but they should still have their needs supported. They should have a health plan which would set out how they should be supported.
• If your child or young person is receiving any health care provision or social care provision which educates or trains them in some way, this provision is treated not as health or social care provision but as special educational provision. This may mean they reach the threshold for an EHC needs assessment.

You can ask for an EHC needs assessment at any time, and school/ college are also able to make this request for your child or young person.

If your child or young person meets the threshold for an EHC needs assessment as set out above and your LA agrees to carry it out, then the assessment will be of your child or young person’s education, health and social care needs. During an EHC needs assessment, your LA must obtain advice and information from health and social care, as well as anyone else you reasonably ask.

If this is not done, and an EHC plan is later issued for your child or young person, this could lead to inaccurate or inadequate sections of the EHC plan. These sections may be blank, or say “not known to the service” or “no health/social care needs” when this is not the case. (Please see below for what you can do if this applies to you.)

The Department for Education has been very clear that this is not sufficient to demonstrate that the LA has fulfilled its duties to seek information and advice, nor to comply with its duty to ‘specify’ health or social care provision in an EHC plan. If the LA fails to comply with its obligations you can make a complaint.

What if my child is receiving support which is educating them?

As we explain above, if your child or young person is receiving any health care provision or social care provision which educates or trains them in some way, this provision is treated as special educational provision (section 21(5) of the Children and Families Act 2014).

A good example of this is speech and language therapy. It looks like it should be health provision – because it is usually provided by the Health Service – but it must be treated as special educational provision unless there are exceptional reasons for not doing so. This is because communication is fundamental to education. Speech and language therapy usually “educates or trains” a child or young person to communicate, sometimes in a different way. It can also be provided to teach a child or young person to develop their social communication and/or language abilities, which can help them with things like friendship-building and making sense of the communication styles used by their teachers.

This means that a child or young person with communication difficulties is likely to be seen as having special educational needs. It also means that where a therapy that educates or trains is written in to an EHC plan, it should be in Section F, as it is special educational provision.

Where does health or social care provision go in an EHC plan?

Your child or young person’s special educational needs and provision will be detailed in the EHC plan, in Sections B and F.

Health care needs and provision will be detailed in Sections C and G, as long as the local health body (usually the integrated care board, known as the ICB) has first agreed it can be included in the EHC plan. If the ICB refuses to include health care provision in the EHC plan, it will still have to deliver it under the relevant health legislation.

Social care needs and provision will be detailed in Sections D and H. Your LA must deliver what it says in Section H under the relevant social care legislation. If it is not included in the EHC plan for any reason, the duty to provide it remains in place under the relevant legislation.

Once special educational provision or health provision is written in to an EHC plan, it is legally enforceable under the plan. Your LA is responsible for making sure all of the special educational provision set out in Section F is delivered. The ICB must make sure health care provision set out in Section G is provided. 

My child’s EHC plan doesn’t contain accurate health and social care provision. What can I do?

If the EHC plan has been recently finalised without the relevant or accurate health and/ or social care provision, you may be able to challenge it by appealing to the SEND Tribunal. However, you can only do this if you also want to appeal Sections B (needs), F (provision) and/ or I (placement).  When you make your appeal about one or more of these education sections, you can also ask the SEND Tribunal to consider making health and/ or social care recommendations.

If you do not want to appeal Sections B, F and/ or I you won’t be able to bring an appeal to get the EHC plan changed, but you will still have the right to mediation. You can mediate about just health and/ social care – there does not need to be an educational element to the dispute here.

EHC plans are also reviewed on an annual basis and you can try to have health/ social care provision included or (if it is included but it is not accurate) amended during the annual review.

For more information on this topic, see our main advice page on health and social care.