One minute guide: health advice in an Education, Health and Care Plan or EHCP

Purpose

This one minute guide has been created to help children, young people and families understand how health advice and information is added to an EHCP. 

What is an EHCP?

An EHCP or Education, Health and Care Plan, is a legal document for children and young people aged zero to 25 who have special educational needs and disability or SEND. The EHCP describes the educational, health and social care needs and provision required to support the child or young person above what schools normally provide

Health advice

Health advice and information is requested by the local authority as part of the statutory education, health and care assessment request or EHCAR. There is an agreed process between health and the local authority that the local authority follow when requesting advice from health for initial education, health and care assessment requests.

If your child or young person is issued an EHCP, there will be an annual review completed within 12 months This is more frequent for children under five years of age. Where children and young people are on active caseloads, up-to-date health advice must be requested for the annual review by the organiser of the annual review. There is an agreed process between health and the local authority that the Special Educational Needs Coordinator or SENCo and/or local authority follow when requesting advice from health for annual reviews.

EHCP or IHCP

An individual heath care plan or IHCP is separate to an EHCP.  An individual heath care plan details how a school supports a child or young person's medical condition and what needs to be done when, and by whom, to manage symptoms within school, for example, asthma and epilepsy. The individual heath care plan should be referenced within the EHCP for the education setting to adhere to, but due to clinical changes in between annual reviews, the individual heath care plan is not copied into the EHCP word-for-word, as this could put the child or young person at risk if the EHCP was followed rather than the current individual heath care plan.

Schools manage medical conditions in school as detailed in section 100 of the Children and Families Act 2014. You can read section 100 of the Children and Families Act 2014 on the government legislation website.

Sections of the EHCP

Section B

You need to document all identified special educational needs in section B. A special educational need is a learning difficulty or disability which requires a special educational provision.

Information in section B should come from professional advice from the education health care needs assessment. You should include health needs which require special educational provision, for example speech and language, in this section.

Section C

Section C of the EHCP specifies all the health needs which relate to the child or young person's special educational need.

You can also include information about health care needs which are not related to special educational need, but need management in the educational setting, for example, asthma.

The following is an example of a health need you might include: 

Florence has sleep difficulties, taking up to three hours for her to fall asleep at night. This can impact at school, as Florence struggles to concentrate during a lesson when she is tired.

Florence has asthma, which is well managed. There is an asthma care plan in place, for school to adhere to.

Section F

Section F of the EHCP details the special educational provision the child or young person needs. Information in this section must be specific to the child or young person and be quantified. Anything documented in Section F is the responsibility of the local authority to provide.

Young people and families can provide private health reports to the local authority for the local authority's consideration as part of the education, health and care assessment.

Any therapies which educate or train a child or young person should be included in this section. These could include information from speech and language therapy, physiotherapy, occupational therapy or Child and adolescent mental health services, that is CAMHS.

This table includes an example of the educational provision you might include.

Section G

Section G details any health care provisions reasonably required by the learning difficulties or disabilities which result in the child or young person having special educational needs.

This table includes an example of the health care provision you might include: