My LA is saying that my child doesn’t need an EHC needs assessment, because the school should be relying on existing SEN funding streams, but this is not happening in practice. Is this lawful?

The only legal test that the local authority (“LA”) should be applying when considering whether to carry out an education, health and care (“EHC”) needs assessment is set out at s. 36(8) CAFA 2014. Overemphasis on SEN funding policies may cause LAs to unlawfully refuse EHC needs assessments. If SEN Support appears inadequate for a child/young person, then an EHC needs assessment is likely necessary. The question is not whether the school could in theory use their SEN funding to meet the child/young person’s special educational needs, but whether that is happening in practice.

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We want occupational therapy moved into Section F of our son’s education, health and care plan.

Section B lists fine motor skills and sensory difficulties as some of his special educational needs, but occupational therapy is written in Section G as ‘health care provision’. We do not believe this is right but what else can we do? We had a meeting with the LA when the EHC plan was at the draft stage but it said it is a service provided by the NHS and it is out of the LA's hands.
The EHC plan has been finalised and we still disagree with the description of our son's needs in Section B and the lack of appropriate provision in Section F of the final EHC Plan.

The provision in Section F is really vague and there is an appendix to the EHC Plan titled ‘steps to achieving outcomes’ which lists all the special educational provision.
The LA agreed to do an EHC needs assessment but now it is complete we’ve received a letter saying the LA is going to make a ‘My Plan’ for our daughter.

This looks like a EHC plan but the information accompanying it says it is ‘non-statutory’. What does this mean? Does our daughter have an EHC plan?
We have the draft EHC plan, and there is a therapy we would like to have included in section F. Can a particular therapy be included in an EHC plan if it is not available from the local health service?
Section F of the draft EHC plan does not detail any of the special educational provision our son needs.

There is only a paragraph to say the school will decide how much provision he needs and when. Is this lawful?
We had always wanted our son to go to the local primary school along with his sisters. Our son has attention deficit disorder and he is a very slow learner. He has been assessed by the LA and we have just received the draft EHC plan

with the professional advice. We are very concerned about the advice from the educational psychologist. When we spoke to him, he told us that he thought that our son was going to need more specialist teaching support than theLA would probably be prepared to give him in a mainstream school. We’ve combed through his report and he says nothing at all about the amount of help he thinks our son needs. Does this mean he’s changed his mind, or has he been ‘leaned on’?
We have just received our daughter’s draft EHC plan and we are not happy with the way her needs have been described in Section B.

All it says is that she is a friendly and playful little girl (which we already knew) with ‘a general delay with her learning’. In fact she has a specific problem with reading and writing. In other areas her development is fine. What can we do?
The LA has agreed to an EHC needs assessment but when we asked for it to approach Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services for advice it said no because there is a really long waiting list.

Our son is suffering with anxiety and we don’t know what else we can do. What rights do we have?
Is Covid-19 still affecting the EHC needs assessment process?
We want to make a request for an EHC needs assessment for our child. They go to a school in a different LA. To which LA should we make the request – our home LA or the LA of the school?

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