Education, Health and Care plans examples of good practice

ABOUT THIS DOCUMENT
The purpose of this document is to support the development of skills in writing good quality Education Health and Care (EHC) plans that meet both the letter and the spirit of the Children and Families Act 2014. Writing an EHC plan can be challenging, and each plan will only achieve the job it was intended to do where it reflects in full the particular individual child or young person to whom it relates.

The first part of this document includes excerpts from real EHC plans. The two EHC plans that follow draw on real examples but the plans themselves relate to fictional children, Jay, page 17; Jessica, page 28. We expect these examples to be useful to those contributing to EHC needs assessments and to those writing plans as well as to parents, children and young people and those supporting them. We intend this document to provoke a debate about the key features of high quality EHC plans. We invite other organisations to identify good EHC plans that exemplify the best for children with a range of different needs and for whom a wide range of outcomes are sought. In turn, we hope that this will build a body of evidence about what works.

BACKGROUND
At our request, Independent Support (IS) submitted 45 EHC plans, which were then analysed. At the same time, the DfE SEND Advisor team collected examples of good practice from their work with local areas. These examples form the basis of this document, along with an exemplar plan developed by the College of Occupational Therapists. We consulted the Independent Panel for Special Education Advice (IPSEA), the DfE and the College of Occupational Therapists; and we discussed our analysis with IS providers and Information, Advice and Support Services at five regional workshops in September and October 2016. We would like to thank everyone who has commented on drafts during the development of this document. The final content of this document is entirely the responsibility of the Council for Disabled Children.

USING THIS DOCUMENT
This document provides examples for discussion and is not advocating any particular approach to meeting needs. We were not party to the information and advice provided in support of the plans and are therefore making no judgement as to whether the particular provision is or is not appropriate for any particular child or young person.