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The school have to provide information about what help has been provided already - if they are in agreement with applying they can’t just wash their hands of it - no wonder they were turned down before if that’s the attitude! Contact SENDIASS in your LEA and IPSEA for advice - you can book a telephone consultation with the latter and they are brilliant and they have lots of useful information on their website. It’s difficult to say what to include - basically all you have - gather school reports too if school aren’t being helpful (though they might tend to err on the positive side) Has she had any involvement with speech therapy or health services? A letter from your PASW or previous SW might help - or previous information laying out emotional needs - difficult to say without knowing what they might say but worth contacting them. We got a letter of support from our old social worker to illustrate my daughter has complex needs when asking for a specific school.

Thanks so much for your reply Safia x

Being adopted doesn’t help getting an EHCP. What you need is loads of evidence and a willingness to engage a lawyer - some disability and SEN charities have lawyers working for them who will work with you at hugely discounted rates.

Ooh didn't know that, that's very useful, thanks Daffin

You or school can apply. Schools have to submit masses of supporting evidence to ask for an assessment but seriously all you have to do is send a letter to the sen team. Seriously that's it. Then you have started the process and the LA will then write to you and the school asking for information.

There is a tight deadline for Las and so they tend to ask for lots of information up front but this is NOT a requirement of the system.

If you look on your LA website, there may be forms for you to use and you can do this. But its not actually necessary. Ipsea and SOS!Sen are two useful organisations which have info on how to apply.

So I would do that rather than wait for school to apply. The LA will have all sorts of rules for schools to follow so they may not have the relevant info to apply right now.

Anyway regardless of who applies, the LA assessment process will kick in. They often say no but then you have appeal options. A lot of times the LA backs down. So I would apply asap and get to appeal if necessary, especially if school think they will say no.

I have gone through the process twice and never needed a lawyer and in fact I believe you don't need one but what you may need are your own reports. Ed psych speech and language and OT for example. But you can commission these for the appeal.

Imo you should consider using the likes of SOS!Sen or education otherwise if you have to appeal. They can advise on what reports you need and when.

Good luck x

Sounds like you have all the evidence you need if you have an EP report and OT Report. Does the EP support the application for an EHCP? If so this will hold a lot of weight and should be clearly stated in the report. It is also helpful that the school is supportive.

We have an EHCP for our daughter which we got when she was about 8. We had private EP and private OT (she has dyspraxia) and paediatric report (she has adhd) . The paediatrician also supported the Ehcp on his letter report.

Does your daughter have speech and language difficulties? If so it may be worth getting that report too. We didn’t as this wasn’t a particular issue for our ad, but it is for a lot of children. Our son for example has delays in this area.

Adopted status doesn’t formally help you get an EHCP. But the reality is that a lot of formerly loooked after children fail academically. That’s why the government introduced the pupil premium plus to try and help these children succeed more academically. I’m my application from for an EHCP I stated this as a fact. My EP suggested to me that the LEA can have more sympathy for formerly looked after children. I don’t know if this is true or not.

We got an EHCP for our daughter pretty easily despite the fact that we were advised that it would be a struggle - which it wasn’t. I think it really really helps if you have supporting professional reports, which you do - maybe the other child which your school me mentioned didn’t have this level of supporting evidence

Good luck xx

Just wanted to clarify, for tribunal in particular you may need an educational OT report ie how her ot difficulties affect her education. And is the ed psych report private? A lot of school ed psych reports are quite perfunctory. Also, 're speech and language, people often assume their child is fine. But a SALT report looks at all sorts of communication issues, particularly receptive language.

I will look into getting a SALT report, and after reading your messages I've decided to trigger the assessment now, there have been too many delays already. I didn't know it wasn't a requirement to have all the paperwork before triggering, thanks so much, all, really really helpful x

Ps I don’t think you need to worry about instructing a solicitor at this stage. We didn’t need to when we applied for an EHCP for our daughter. If I had the odd question I would call the helplines run by sos!sen and ipsea. Need to book the latter. Sos!sen also offer face to Face meetings for a small donation and if you get to see her, their lawyer, Eleanor Wright is very good and experienced. They also have lots of useful info on their websites. You would only need to instruct a lawyer if the lea refuses to assess or refuses to grant an EHCP but hopefully that won’t happen given all the evidence you have- the EP report will carry a lot of weight

Good luck and keep posting if you have any more questions xx

We are applying for EHCP but school do not see a lot of what we see and have struggled to get assessments that way. RE SALT report Flosskirk mentioned does this have to be done via school?

Not nessarily

For my son, school did refer him to the nhs salt department and an nhs salt came out to assess him about 6 months later

They assessed him as having Severe expressive language difficulties but said that therapy wasn’t available on the nhs - they said you need an EHCP for that. So we are paying for a private salt to give him therapy while we apply for an EHCP

I know a lot of parents who have commissioned private salts to do an assessment and they have used this for evidence in applying for an EHCP. But I’d suggest that the most important report to commission first is an educational psychologist report .the EP should be able to advise you if a salt assessment would be beneficial too, unless of course this is evident already (which it was for our son as I could tell that his speech was delayed)

Hope that helps x

My daughter was seen by the school SALT when we started looking to get her help. School suggested it. I had no idea there were any issues and was quite sceptical tbh.

But the assessment showed she had significant receptive language problems. However the therapist signed her off - basically, without an ehc there is no money for therapy as its an expensive external resource. So teachers we're given some strategies to use but that was it.

When we got our speech and language assessment done for our appeal to assess, we used someone highly experienced in tribunals. She wasn't local and we had to pay her travel expenses but she absolutely knew what she was doing.

She did a full educational SALT assessment, so everything was geared to how issues were affecting education. And she identified what the school SALT had plus lots more besides.

We got OT and ed psych reports done too but the SALT one was the most useful.

SALT requires an ehc for the therapy. Ed psych issues can usually be managed in school. If you have to do one assessment I would do SALT.

Our daughter got her them Statement and place at an expensive private provision on the back of the SALT report.

N.b private report was 35 pages long and school one was 4. Also be really careful if you do both. You can't repeat the test within 6 months, so if school do it, you will have to wait 6 months to see someone privately.

Brilliant, thanks x