Guidance notes for a young person's request to carry out an EHC needs assessment

If you are aged between 16 and 24, you have a right to ask your local authority to carry out an education, health and care (EHC) needs assessment.

If you are attending college or another post 16 setting, it will be helpful to talk to your tutor or a learning support mentor about why you think an education, health and care needs assessment would be useful.

You might also like to ask for some help or support from Lancashire SEND IAS.

You can contact your local Inclusion Service area team for more information or for further advice about how to complete this form.

Completing the young person's request form

You can make a request using this form:

You can use this information to help you when you are completing the form to request an EHCP assessment.

  • It is important to write down your details, so that we know who is making the request and how to contact you.
  • It is useful to have the name and contact details for your parents or the person that is responsible for you, so that we can contact them for further information if needed. If you do not want your parents/person responsible to be contacted, this section can be left blank.
  • Please let us know if there has been any professionals who have been supporting you in the last 12 months. This might be someone from an education setting such as a tutor, pastoral mentor or educational psychologist, health (e.g. a Doctor, CAMHS, consultant, speech and language therapist or physiotherapist) or social care professionals (examples might include a support worker, social worker or youth offending officer).

Section A

Do you feel there is any important information to share from when you were younger?

  • You can choose what information you would like to include and it is important to be aware that this information might need to be shared with other professionals.
  • You might want to share information about your experience of school, whether you have moved house from one area to another or if there has been something significant that you feel it is important for people supporting you to be aware of.

What are your hopes and dreams for the future?

  • This could be what you want for your immediate future or in a few years' time. It can include everything you might want from life from being happy, to having friends, getting a job or becoming more independent.
  • It is important to know what is important to you for the future, as this will help the people supporting you to develop action plans with your hopes and dreams in mind.

Section B

Strengths and Special Educational Needs

  • Strengths - what are the things that are working well for you? You may wish to consider your gifts, skills and achievements.
  • Needs - what do you struggle with and what is making it difficult for you to access the curriculum and make progress?

It might be useful to read through some of the questions and guidance below as a guide, to help you to think about areas where you have strengths as well as identifying what you find more difficult.

  • How do you feel you are progressing in school/college, are there things you are making good progress with? Are there particular aspects of learning you find difficult?
  • How do you like to communicate with adults and other young people or is this something you find difficult? Do you find it easy to make friends?
  • Are there situations when you feel more able to cope and why do you think this is? Do you have any worries about how you manage your feelings or behaviour?
  • Do you have difficulties with larger movements (gross motor skills) such as running, walking, climbing, and balance? Do you find smaller movements (fine motor skills) difficult such as fastening buttons, holding a pen, hand eye coordination? Are you particularly sensitive to sensory experiences, e.g. smells, tastes, noises, the feel of certain materials, lights?
  • Do you feel that you are as independent as you would like to be? If not, what needs to happen to help you become more independent?

Section C

Health needs

  • Do you have any health needs and/or support from health services? (This may include support from your GP, Specialist Therapist, Paediatrician and Psychiatrist. Please provide details of the support provided)

Section D

Social Care needs

  • Do you have any social care needs and/or support from social care services?

Section E

Outcomes and Provision

  • Outcomes - what outcomes do you want to achieve by the end of this stage (or phase) of your education?
  • Provision - what support has worked well and what support do you think is needed to help you to achieve your outcomes?
  • Is there anything that you feel is not working well for you? Have you discussed your concerns with the educational placement and what was their response?

It is important for you to let us know if you give your permission for professionals and your parents/carers to be contacted, so that the Local Authority can contact them for further information. If you have been supported to complete this form, they should also provide their name and contact details.

Please contact your local Inclusion Service area team for further advice before you submit your request.

They will be able to provide further guidance about what will happen next.

For more information, please see education, health and care (EHC) plans.