How the Act helps children and young people with special educational needs or a disability (in Part 3 of the Act)
The aim is to give good support to children and young people with special educational needs or a disability, and their families. The Act helps children with disabilities too, even if they don’t have special educational needs. Under the Act, councils have to find out which children and young people in their area might have special educational needs, and which have a disability.
The Act says things about the help children and parents can get from health care services and social care services, as well as help in education. Children and young people with special educational needs can find it harder to learn than other people their age. They can need extra help. The Act means that this help could go right up to when they are 25, where the council thinks they need longer to finish their education. It means simpler ways of assessing what children and young people need. It means getting health and social care services to work together better. And it means giving children and young people themselves, as well as their parents, more choices about the help they get.
The Act says NINE main things to help children and young people with special educational needs from birth to age 25. For the first time, young people aged 16-25 have the right to ask for their needs to be assessed, the right to say which college they want to go to, and the right to make appeals about the support they receive.
These changes only happen in England, but they would still happen for a child who comes from England but goes to school in Wales.
One - Getting education, health care and social care services working together. Under the Act, councils must make sure that education, health and social care services all work together, if that helps them do better for children and young people with special educational needs or a disability.
In each part of the country, education, health and social care people have to work together to decide exactly what help they all need to give children and young people with special educational needs or a disability. The Act says that if health service people think a child under five is disabled, or that they might have special educational needs, they must tell their parents. They must also tell the parents if there is a particular organisation that can give them advice about the disability or special educational needs their child may have. They must then tell the council. Then the council can check what help the child may need.
Once they have agreed what help there should be for the child or young person, they should work together to make sure it is given to them.
Two - Telling children, young people and their parents what they need to know about their disability or special educational needs. The Act says that councils must tell children and young people, as well as their parents, what they need to know about their disability or special educational needs.
Three - Making sure children, young people and families know what help they can get when a child or young person has special educational needs or a disability. Under the Act, every local council in England must write down what help there is in their area for children and young people with special educational needs or a disability. This is called the ‘Local Offer’, and everyone can read it.
The Local Offer will tell people what help they can get with their health care, and what help they can get from social care services, as well as what help they can get with their education. It will say what help there is with travelling to school or college.
And it will say what help there is with training for work. It will say what help there is for young people becoming adults and starting to live on their own. It will also say what help there is for children and young people from the area who are studying somewhere else.
Children, young people or their parents can tell the council what they think about the help there is in this Local Offer. The council has to tell people what children and young people and parents said about it, and what they are going to do about what they have said.
The Government can make rules about Local Offers. These can say how councils should ask children and young people and their parents what they think about what the council put in its Local Offer. And they can say how children and young people or their parents can complain about the Local Offer.
Four - Making sure that different organisations work together to help children and young people with special educational needs. The Act tells lots of different organisations to work together with the local council to get the right sort of help to children and young people with special educational needs. These are organisations like other councils, schools the council runs, academy schools, special schools and colleges, nurseries, further education and sixth form colleges, youth offending teams, centres where young offenders are detained, and parts of the health service.
Five - Giving children and young people and their parents more say about the help they get. The Act says councils must take notice of what the children and their parents say about what help they are given. Their wishes and their feelings about their education, training, hobbies and activities have to be taken into account too. It is important for councils to help children and young people and their parents to take part as much as possible in decisions about what help they get. Children, young people and their parents have to be told the information they need to be able to do that.
Councils have to keep checking whether their Local Offer provides enough help for children and young people with a disability or special educational needs. They have to ask children and young people and their parents what they think when they do this. If children, young people and parents say they don’t think there is enough help, the council have to say what they are going to do about that.
Six - Having one overall assessment to look at what special help a child or young person needs with their education, and their health and social care needs, all at the same time. This is a new type of assessment, looking at the child or young person’s special educational needs, together with their health and social care needs. A young person or one of their parents can ask the council to do an assessment. Or the child or young person’s school or college can ask the council to do an assessment. The council then has to decide whether the child or young person needs special help. It has to ask either the young person, or their parent, what they think. If a young person is aged over 19, the council must consider whether they need more time to complete their education than other young people who do not have special educational needs.
If a child or young person is in a centre for young offenders aged under 18, they, or their parents if they are under 16, can ask for an assessment. The council must consider what education, health or social care help (if any) they will need after they are released.
If the child or young person is still in custody when the assessment has been completed, the council must work with the centre for young offenders to make sure the right support is in place.
The Government can make rules about things like how to do education, health and care assessments, and how quickly they have to be done.
Seven - A child or young person to have one plan for meeting their education, health and social care needs, which can run from birth to age 25 if councils agree that a young person needs more time to get ready for adulthood. The Act brings in one new plan for how different professionals will give the child or young person the help they need with their education, health and social care. This would be called an ‘Education, health and care plan’. Or ‘EHC’ plan for short. This is instead of the Statement’ of special educational needs or the ‘Learning Difficulty Assessment’ which children and young people used to get. As well as saying what help the child or young person needs with their education, the plan will say what they should be able to achieve if they get that help.
The council has to take notice of what the young person, or their parent, said should go in the plan. They have to check the plan with the young person or their parent before it is finished off.
The young person or their parent can ask for their plan to say they should go to a particular school or college. That school or college has to take them unless the council thinks it is not the right school or college for them.
The Act says the council must make sure the child or young person actually gets the help with their education that their plan says they should get. The relevant health care body has to give them the health care that is set out in their plan too. The council must keep the plan up to date. They must check it each year. If a person under 18 with an EHC plan goes into a centre for young offenders, the council and health service must carry on giving help.
When the young person is 19 and over, the council must decide whether the young person has achieved the things that they set out to do under their EHC plan.
The help in a young person’s EHC plan can carry on up to age 25 if the council thinks the young person still needs that help. When a young person is aged between 19 and 25, the council must take into account whether there are still things in their EHC plan the young person needs to achieve, when deciding if they still need help. The council may help them to get back into college or job training if that is what the young person needs and wants. If a young person is being trained as an apprentice, they can get help through an EHC plan as well.
Eight - Making sure children, young people and their parents can choose some of the help they need. Under the Act, a young person who has an EHC plan, or their parents, can ask the local council to give them their own ‘personal budget’. This means the amount of money the council has to pay for the help they need with their education, health and social care.
The young person or one of their parents can be given this money to spend on some of the help they need. Or they can help decide how the council spends it on helping them.
This is to give them a real say in what help they get. It is up to the young person and their parents to decide whether they want to spend the money on help themselves, or to leave it with the council to spend for them. The Government can make rules about how this works. The rules could say how the council should give information and advice to young people and parents to help them choose what the money should be spent on.
Nine – Providing ways to help sort things out if a child or young person or their parent needs to appeal about the help they get. Under the Act, if a young person or their parent wants to make an appeal, they will be told about how a ‘mediator’ can help them sort things out. A mediator is someone who can listen without taking sides and helps people to make the right decision. A mediator can help sort out things to do with education, health services, or social care.
If they don’t want a mediator, then the appeal goes to a panel of people called a Tribunal to decide what should happen.
The Act says the Government can let children themselves make their own appeals about their EHC plans to a Tribunal. It can try this out in some parts of the country, and if it works OK, it can make this happen everywhere in England. There would be rules about how old a child has to be to do this, how to decide whether they can manage to do this, what sort of help they’d need, and how someone else could do this for them if they wanted them to.
The Act also says the Government will look at how complaints and appeals work under the new system, and report back to Parliament.
