Despite having applied for an EHCP (Education, Health and Care Plan) back on May, I haven’t felt able to write about the experience as yet. I somehow felt guilty in the early stages that it all seemed to be going rather well… a little too easy in fact.
In the groups that I’ve joined in Facebook, I’ve heard horror stories. ‘Expect to fight’ and ‘always appeal’. These are common themes in posts about the EHCP process.
I first learnt about EHCPs from our online school. Sue, our pastoral support officer, explained that a number of students had InterHigh named as their school on their EHCP.
Being still registered at the mainstream school, I asked about it at the next meeting. This was July 2019.
‘Oh’, said the SENCO. ‘You won’t get an EHCP for anxiety.’
We’ll skip over the fact that she’d been referred for the ASD pathway the previous month. So, you know, probably not ‘just’ anxiety we were dealing with. My own mental health was such that I didn’t question this.
I then asked our Specialist Support worker about it, when we first met her in late August. ‘Yes, do it’ she said, ‘but everyone gets turned down initially. Be prepared to appeal.’
I did some reading. One of the best posts I read was on Special Needs Jungle, about all the evidence that one mum collected to support her application.
I had none. There was simply no evidence. (I realise now that I had more than I thought, but knew then that I needed more.)
So, how to go about securing evidence?
First, I wrote to school. I made a Subject Access Request (SAR), following the instructions in one of the school policies. Surely there must be evidence in school’s records, right?
Ah, if only. All I got were copies of my emails to attendance and to support staff about her. The only document that has proved useful was school’s half of the ASD assessment application… which made for difficult reading.
(Tip: when reading documents like this, bear in mind that to get anywhere with these services, you have to paint the worst picture. Understand that when reading them. It’s hard, but take it on board, please.)
So that was futile.
Next step: put pressure school to get an Educational psychologist to assess her.
Somehow, through tears and blind rage at what turned out to be my last meeting at school, I managed to secure this. It proved to be the single most useful piece of evidence. The Educational psychologist came to our house to assess he just a couple of months after my request, and after spending more than two and a half hours in our home, and pages of report a month later, I felt I had what I needed to apply.
Then, COVID happened. Not to me personally, but in case I haven’t mentioned it before, I had a business to run and several members of staff to keep employed, occupied at home and above all else safe. That doesn’t happen by itself, or overnight.
I finally got round to applying in May. I gathered my evidence, wrote my letter (then had to rewrite it all into the online application form) and boom, it was done.
Then the time bomb starts ticking. Or, at least from our side in COVID times. The statutory timescales have been relaxed on the LA’s side, but not the parents’. Because apparently COVID isn’t having an effect on us.
I had two weeks to submit evidence and fill in another form. As part of this, I wrote a full timeline of events, including a few old skeletons of memories that have been unearthed as we’ve gone through this process. I’ll share what I did in a separate post.
I was amazed just four weeks into the process to get an immediate agreement to assess. No fight, no need to appeal. OK, I thought. But that’s just the first hurdle cleared. We won’t sail over the second one so easily.
After a second (virtual this time) Educational psychologist appointment, a letter from the paediatrician saying that he’d never heard of her, being told that school had provided ‘lots of evidence’ (contrary to what the SAR has unearthed, it seems), my caseworker did a telephone interview and the assessment stage was complete.
And so, nearly nine weeks ago, we got the agreement to issue a plan.
Still reeling from that one.
And two days ago I finally received the draft plan, and my prompt for this post.
An unexpected shock.
As part of the plan, the evidence gathered at the assess stage was attached. On reading the draft, evidence ‘K3’ was mentioned several times, and related to a number of points that seemed contrary to what the Ed psych or I had made. It slowly dawned on me what this might be.
Yep, the school.
I opened the appendices and, lo and behold, there was school’s statement. Apparently ‘in support of the EHCP application’, or so I’d been promised by the SENCO.
At best, the school report contains factual inaccuracies. It painstakingly paints the school in a rather favourable light. At worst, you might brand it fake news.
And, as an editor, I might also say that the grammar was atrocious. My daughter, who doesn’t yet have her English gcse (thanks to this school) could have written better during a meltdown.
To say that I’m angry would be an understatement. I. Am. Furious. I’d gone to great lengths to remove all emotion and bias from what I’d written in my timeline, and her was the SENCO saying that my daughter was ‘rude and abrasive’, ‘aggressive and demanding’.
Sorry. Are we talking about the same person?
Now, if I were to accept these definitions – which could be attributed to a sum total of two school instances – I would say that all behaviour is in response to stimulus and environs. So such characteristics would be down to the situation(s) in which she’d been placed.
But, in order to paint school’s role in a positive light, those incidents have been somewhat skimmed over.
I’m not saying that my daughter can’t be those things. She can. So can anyone, with the right provocation.
That’s not the worst of what was written, though.
Here are the two versions of one incident. School’s is first, then mine.
And here’s the SENCO’s interpretation of the GP’s letter, of which she has a copy.
Sadly, the inaccuracies (I’m being polite) don’t end there.
The time bomb is still ticking. I’m now trying to quell my outrage and disgust so that I can concentrate on the next matter in hand. Dealing with the draft plan which, sadly, is weak as hell.
I’ve been warned if the ‘weasely words’ and here they are, in black and white.
‘Should have’, ‘Opportunities for’, ‘Some protected time with’.
No quantification. No specified input to meet the targets.
Sadly, there’s nothing tangible, nothing concrete in the draft. Am I disappointed? Yes. Am I surprised? No, not really.
And so the battle goes on.
After school had agreed to the Ed psych, and then agreed to support an EHCP, I’d decided not to go down the route of complaining to school. The SENCO’s report is, however, the final straw. Three days on from receiving that report I am raging. I can’t sleep, I’m consumed once more by the injustice of what my daughter has been through, and school’s abject failure to do what was required by law.
In no way should it be viewed as OK for a teenager’s life to be so impaired that she cannot leave the house for weeks on end. In no way should we have been left to pick up the pieces from a situation that was not of our choosing. In no way whatsoever should her absences have been unauthorised. In no way was us homeschooling going to solve all her problems.
I fully accept that, by complaining, I’ll achieve nothing for us. I don’t have high hopes for a positive outcome. But they’re not getting away with it.