Education, Health and Care Plans; the ‘golden ticket’ to effective provision for autistic children and young people?

Being a parent of a child with special educational needs and a Special Educational Needs Coordinator, has given me a valuable insight into ‘both sides of the coin’ when it comes to additional learning support and provision. Parents are led to believe that an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP), will solve their child’s problems and lead to the support their child needs and deserves, but nothing (in my opinion) could be further from the truth!

Everyday, I read about the desperate struggles parents of  autistic children face on a daily basis; their children are struggling in their school environments; they struggle to get their child out of the house in the morning, due to their child’s anxiety levels and even if they do manage to get their child to school, they’re not getting what they need! So what’s the answer?

One things for sure, it’s not necessarily an Education, Health and Care Plan! Don’t get me wrong, an EHCP gives your child a passport into specialist provision that otherwise wouldn’t be available to them and it can attract extra funding for resources and intervention, but there are a couple of specific issues that the ‘golden ticket’ won’t solve- they don’t guarantee your child will be educated in a favourable environment and they don’t guarantee that your child will get the targeted provision they need and deserve!

Specialist school places are in short supply and it seems that ‘inclusive’ mainstream schools, with their busy, bulging classrooms, have led to many autistic children, being homes-schooled, as frustrated parents battle to protect their children’s mental health from further damage.

Even when the environment is right; calm and purposeful with teachers who are aware of your child’s needs, the EHCP won’t necessarily guarantee that your child receives the targeted provision they need.
It’s the school and the provision that your child needs that makes the biggest difference, not the EHCP.

I spoke with an ex litigation lawyer recently, who has specialist SEN knowledge. At that time, I’d been supporting a young man whose needs weren’t being met effectively by his school and whose mum had decided to get him the extra support he needed elsewhere. However, due to her ongoing frustration with her son’s school, she chose to make a parental request for an EHCP needs assessment. In truth, I didn’t feel that he needed one. I felt that he needed to be in a school that met his needs.

I spoke with the gentleman that I refer to above, to find out if anything could be done to hold the school to account . He replied, that there wasn’t a huge amount that could be done and that it was a very difficult matter to solve.

So, I sit here wondering about a system that’s under considerable strain. Do all these children and young people really need an EHCP? Or like the lady I describe above, is their only other option to ‘guarantee’ that their child gets what they need, to go down the EHCP route?

Please understand that I’m on your side; I do the job that I do because I want to make a positive difference. I get more pleasure that you will ever know from supporting your extraordinary children and doing my absolute best to ensure they get the high quality provision and targeted support they need. Like you, when they’re calm and happy, when they achieve something that you never thought would be possible and when they have the confidence to be proud of who they are, my skin tingles and my smile couldn’t be wider! However, I do feel sorry that in many cases, the ‘golden ticket’ alone doesn’t deliver good outcomes for autistic children ; an adequately funded school, with a thorough understanding of autistic differences, personalised intervention and the passion to make positive change, will!

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