If you have a right to mediation, you can mediate about the following matters:

• education
• health, and/ or
• social care.

There does not need to be an educational element to the mediation in order to discuss health care or social care. You can discuss just education, just health care or just social care, if that is what is relevant to your situation.

That said, if you want to appeal following mediation there will need to be an educational element to the matter. As well as ordering changes relating to section B (needs), section F (provision) and/or section I (placement), the SEND Tribunal can recommend changes to:

• section C (health needs)
• section D (social care needs)
• section G (health provision), and
• sections H1 and H2 (social care provision).

The SEND Tribunal can make these recommendations in all appeals except refusal to assess appeals.

Heath care mediation

You can discuss:

• the health care provision set out in the EHC plan
• the fact there is no health care provision set out in the EHC plan, or
• the fact that a particular type of health care provision is missing from the EHC plan.

If you only want to discuss health care provision in (or its absence from) an EHC plan, the integrated care board (ICB) will arrange for mediation and your local authority (LA) will not attend.

The ICB must make sure its representative attending the mediation is someone with sufficient decision making authority. That means that the representative should be able to make decisions about the issues in the mediation session and should not be saying they need to take decisions back to a panel to decide.   

Health plus education and/or social care mediation

If you want to discuss health care and any educational and/or social care matters, then the LA will arrange for mediation between all the parties - the LA, the ICB and you.

The LA (and ICB, if relevant) must attend and must be represented by someone with sufficient decision making authority. That again means that they should be able to make decisions about the issues in the mediation session and not defer to a panel.

Education and/or social care mediation

Here, the ICB will not attend, and the LA will arrange for mediation with you. Again, the LA representative must have sufficient decision making authority.

For more information on this topic, see our main advice page on mediation.