The new Education, Health and Care Plan - are you ready?

Changes are just over the horizon to the way support and services for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are assessed, managed and delivered.

The idea of channelling the many strands of special needs provision into a single, co-ordinated record is not new, but the concept will become reality when Education, Health and Care plans (EHC) come into force from September.

The proposed reforms are currently going through Parliament as part of the Children and Families Bill, but now is a good time for authorities to consider what impact the changes will have on the way they work.

What’s changing?

The new EHC plans will see the launch of a single plan for children with SEND from birth to the age of 25. The plan will encompass their education, health and social care needs, with a strong emphasis on close involvement with the family and improved outcomes. This will require the different agencies involved to work together much more closely than they may have done in the past. It will also call for a cultural shift in the way data on children and young people is recorded and shared.

While some of the details are yet to be finalised, what is clear is that it will not be enough to expect your existing software to be able to do the job efficiently and effectively. Authorities will need to review their current processes and ensure that they have systems in place that will meet the new requirements.

Tailored plans

One of the challenges will be in ensuring authorities have the flexibility they require from their IT systems to design EHC plans for children according to local needs.

The new plans will call for information from a range of practitioners who have had contact with the child, recording and respecting the parent’s and child’s wishes, as well as data relating to previous assessments alongside family and educational details.

If your authority’s existing system enables data from multiple sources to be recorded and viewed centrally, you could be one step ahead. But there are other aspects of the new rules on SEND that need to be considered too.

Meeting requirements

Some of the deadlines associated with managing the EHC plans are changing in relation to things like assessments, correspondence and responding to information requests.

On-screen alerts when deadlines are approaching and processes that automatically flag overdue information can help authorities to keep on top of this. Importantly, councils need to ensure that their existing technology will continue to support them in fulfilling their statutory reporting requirements. 

An evolving plan

Managing a single plan which stretches from birth through to early adulthood is a big change in approach. The plan will evolve throughout the child’s life as their needs change, from nursery provision encompassing each stage of their education as well as the provision of support in the workplace. The ability to create and store what will be, in essence, a "live" plan for the provision of SEND services over this timeframe is the most effective way of managing this.

This means that a health visitor or social worker could log on to record the results of an assessment and information from schools and colleges could be pulled through easily as the child gets older. The views of parents and the child themselves are set to become a key element to the EHC too, so authorities will need to consider how this detail can be incorporated into the plan simply. 

The aim of the EHC plan is to help ensure special educational needs and disabilities are identified in children early and an ongoing plan is put in place that will ultimately improve outcomes for this vulnerable group.

While the final details continue to emerge, it is worth considering what systems you already have in place that will support the new requirements for SEND provision. Software is continually being developed as a result of the changes so it may not be necessary for authorities to re-invent the wheel.