SEND School Provision and Education Health Care Plans (EHCP)

Special Education Needs and Disabilities (SEND) support is available at every stage of education. This can be identified in the early years setting and follow the young person through every stage of their education.

If your child’s school or setting can't meet your child's needs using the support they usually offer to children who need extra help, the County Council may carry out a needs assessment for your child.  This is called an Education Health and Care Assessment or EHC assessment. When your child's needs have been assessed a plan for meeting them may be drawn up. This plan is called an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP).

EHC needs assessment process - tell us about your experience

We are conducting a survey about the EHC needs assessment process. Find our more about the Education Health and Care Needs Assessment Survey

IMPORTANT INFORMATION – WCF SEND Service and Educational Psychology Service capacity

The WCF SEND Team 

The SEND service is currently experiencing significant staffing shortages in our Casework Officer Teams and this may affect your communications with us.  

We are working very hard to address the current staffing issues and we will respond to your communications as soon as we can. We would be grateful for your understanding and patience during this time. 

During this period we acknowledge that we are unable to respond to queries within the normal time period but we will endeavour to respond within 5 working days. If you have not heard from us after 5 working days, please contact the Area Teams:

• sensouth@worcschildrenfirst.org.uk / 01905 843125
• sennorth@worcschildrenfirst.org.uk / 01905 845182
• Post16@worcschildrenfirst.org.uk / 01905 845198

The WCF Educational Psychology Service 

The Educational Psychology Service is also experiencing significant capacity issues due to a national shortage of Educational Psychologists. 

Whilst the Service is working hard to secure additional psychology support there remains a backlog in the allocation of Psychologists for new EHC Need Assessments. 

There is currently a delay of up to 12 weeks in the allocation of new Educational Psychology Assessments which means that it is likely that your child’s assessment will not take place during the statutory advice giving period.

Once an Educational Psychologist has been allocated to provide advice for a child they then have 6 weeks in which to carry out their assessment and to provide the SEND Service with their report.