You received a final EHCP for your child, the provision is sufficiently specified and detailed, and you breathed a sigh of relief.

Now you find that the provision specified in Section F of the EHCP isn’t being put in place at the educational setting. Perhaps you’ve been told there is no available speech and language therapist, or the occupational therapist that usually comes to the school has left. Or your child is sharing a teaching assistant with other children in the class but Section F specifies dedicated 1:1.

What can you do?

• Firstly, talk with the SENCO and find out what is happening and if they are able to confirm why provision is not being put in place.
• Determine if the issue is with the school and is resolvable, or the issue is outside of their control – for example with support from an outside agency
• If you have a discussion or meeting with the school/college, then send an email to them afterwards confirming what was discussed so you have captured the conversation in writing.
• If the issue is not resolvable with the school, it is the LA’s responsibility to ensure that it is delivering provision set out in Section F of the EHCP – it has a statutory duty under Section 42 of the Children & Families Act 2014 to do so.
• If the school is not able to get the provision in place, you should contact your case worker via email For example, if your child should be having a weekly intervention from an occupation therapist but it’s not happening, ask the LA to remedy this immediately.  Remind the LA of its duty under Section 42 of the Children and Families’ Act 2014.
• The LA may respond that it is unable to guarantee when it will start. You should therefore advise them that the LA is failing in its statutory duty, and submit a complaint to the LA via its formal complaints policy that you will find on its website.
• If this is not satisfactory (you are expected to have gone down this route before considering judicial review as judicial review is the last resort), then you should write to the LA and advise that you will consider judicial review unless the situation is resolved immediately.  Give them a date by which you require a response.
• If you hear nothing, or nothing is actioned, then you should consider issuing a pre-action letter, ahead of a Judicial Review. You will need a solicitor to issue a pre-action letter.

See our tools and guidance on judicial review.