Document Service

The team at SOS!SEN provides a service to check or draft a range of documentation associated with the EHCP process.  Please complete the service booking form,  indicating what help you would like.

Services include:

• checking and advising on the quality of a draft EHCP
• drafting parental grounds for appeal
• other Tribunal documents such as the Working Document, case statements and witness statements
• pre-action letter (judicial review)

We will ask you to provide background paperwork about your child to help us provide a robust and comprehensive response. Please attach the documents to the booking form. We will contact you to confirm that we are able to begin your piece of work once we have assigned your case to one of our trained volunteers.

We ask for a fee for reviewing and writing documents, depending on their complexity. These are often supporting statutory processes and are undertaken by highly trained members of the team.  Please see below for details.  As a small charity, this ensures we are able to continue to support others.

Judicial Review (JR) is a way for parents and young people to challenge the decisions of a public body, by asking a court to decide whether the decision of, in this instance, a local authority, has been made in a lawful, fair and reasonable way. The same is true where the local authority has failed to deliver on its statutory duties.

For straightforward cases, such as a failure to adhere to EHCP timelines, we provide these letters free of charge. However, if your case involves multiple breaches, ongoing failures, or more complex legal matters, there will be a charge ranging from £150 to £300.

The final cost will depend on several factors, including:

• The complexity of the issues involved.
• The time required to review and assess your case.
• The number of concerns that need to be addressed in the letter.

If your case requires input from our Legal Officer or their team due to its complexity, the cost will be at the higher end of this range. Please be assured that we will always inform you of any charges before proceeding.

Read our post to find out more about applying for a PAP letter.

Cost

PAP letters for straightforward cases (e.g. EHCP timelines) are free. For all other PAP letters, the charge ranges from £150 to £300.

We never want our prices to be a barrier to people accessing our services. If you would like to use our services but finances are stopping you, please get in touch to see how we can help.

Our EHCP Draft Analysis service offers a comprehensive review of your draft Education, Health, and Care Plan (EHCP) following a needs assessment or annual review.

Our expert guidance highlights areas where the plan may not meet statutory requirements and ensures that all sections comply with legislation outlined in the Children and Families Act 2014, the SEND Regulations 2014, and the SEND Code of Practice 2015.

To carry out the analysis, we request that you provide the draft EHCP as a Word document. This allows us to add detailed comments directly into the plan. Additionally, we’ll supply you with a set of action points to guide your response when communicating with the Local Authority about the draft.

We can also support you in preparing for an Annual Review by checking a final EHCP, providing tailored advice on areas of the plan that may require improvement during the review process.

Please note: Our analysis focuses solely on the contents of the EHCP. We do not check the reports used to create the plan, so please do not upload them as they will not be reviewed.

Cost

Our EHCP Analysis service is £145.

We never want our prices to be a barrier to people accessing our services. If you would like to use our services but finances are stopping you, please get in touch to see how we can help.

If you wish to appeal against a decision made by the Local Authority in regard to an EHCP, you will need to submit an appeal to the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal (SENDIST). You will need to complete either the SEND35a or SEND35 form, both of which can be found on the government website.

The forms ask you various questions about why you wish to appeal the LA’s decision. The boxes provided for the answers are quite short and we suggest writing ‘see attached appeal grounds’ in them and having a separate document which lays out the reasons, or grounds, for your appeal. Having a separate appeal grounds document means that you can set out your reasons, or grounds, logically and is much easier than switching between forms and continuation pages.

Find out more about on our Appealing a Decision page.

In our Grounds of Appeal writing service, we will write your grounds which are then ready to submit with your appeal form.  To enable us to do this, we will use the information you provide us on our service booking form and evidence to build an argument in support of the outcome you seek.

Cost

The cost of our appeal writing service is dependent on the amount of evidence to support the appeal.

Grounds of appeal for Refusal to Assess is £300

Grounds of appeal for Refusal to Issue or Appeals against the contents of an EHC plan

• with LA reports only is £350
• with LA reports plus one independent report is £400
• with LA reports plus two independent reports is £450
• LA reports plus three independent reports is £500

We never want our prices to be a barrier to people accessing our services. If you would like to use our services but finances are stopping you, please get in touch to see how we can help.

You may have current and historical documentation regarding your child’s SEN or disabilities. It will be helpful and speed up the process if you are able to ensure those are available as pdf or Word documents that you can attach to the service booking form. If you have any issues with uploading your documents, please contact us.