Ask for an education, health and care (EHC) assessment

Education, health and care (EHC) plans

Before you can get an EHC plan, you must ask for an EHC assessment.

Before you ask for an EHC assessment

You should:

1. read our guide to education, health and care plans for parents and carers.
2. get advice from your child’s nursery, playgroup, school or college
3. look into support options at your child’s nursery, playgroup school or college
4. check who can get an education, health and care (EHC) plan
5. check what's in an EHC plan

Get more information about EHC assessments and plans on the Amaze website.

Ask for an EHC assessment

You can’t ask for an assessment over the phone. You'll need to write to us and give some examples of your child needs. Your child doesn’t need to have a diagnosis.

Contact the SEN Team

What happens next

Our SEN team will get in touch with you. They will work with you to get more information from:

• you, about your child's needs and what they want to achieve in their future
• other people who may have information about your child, such as a childminder, nursery, school or college, health services, the educational psychology service and social care
• anyone else mentioned when you asked for an EHC assessment

All of the information will then go to a SEN panel that decides if your child needs an EHC assessment.

When you’ll get a decision

We will let you know our decision within 6 weeks of you asking for an EHC assessment.

We have 20 weeks from when you asked for an EHC assessment to create and issue the final EHC plan.

Check what happens if the SEN panel decides that:

• we need to do an EHC assessment
• we don’t need to do an EHC assessment