Fast forward to March 2025 and there has been a dramatic turnaround in Kent, with most children and young people being assessed and having plans issued by the national 20-week deadline and Kent becoming one of the top 20% of councils in England meeting the national deadline.
The turnaround in Kent’s performance in managing the EHC assessment process hasn’t been without its challenges, as Christine McInnes, Director of Education and SEND, explains.
“We started our improvements in early 2023 and were under no illusions about the scale of the work needed.
“Kent has almost 21,000 children and young people with an EHC Plan and we receive, on average, 260 requests each month to assess the additional needs of children and young people.
“We had to look at everything about the EHC assessment process from scratch – from how we captured the voices of children and young people, and improved the experience for parents, to hiring permanent caseworkers, improving the consistency and robustness of our decision-making and working to clear the backlog of assessments and plans.
“In addition to this, we had to review and improve the processes and procedures our teams followed, and we introduced a new quality assurance framework to improve the quality and consistency of our decision-making and EHC Plans.”
Other changes made have included:
- Working with schools and SEN casework teams to help them support children and young people to express their own views (rather than filtered through an adult) so that these can be captured in their EHC plan and make sure it truly reflects their needs and aspirations. This training has already shown positive results, with 76% of EHC Plans that are audited as part of the Council’s Quality Assurance framework for SEND now rated as Good or Outstanding. SEN staff are also speaking directly to young people who are 16 and older to capture their needs and aspirations in the annual reviews of their plans.
- Reviewing the information about EHC Plans provided to parents and the suite of letters sent to them to make sure each stage of the process is communicated clearly.
- SEN Inclusion Advisers working with schools and families to understand the reasons why the Council might have declined to issue an EHC Plan and advising schools on how they can meet the needs of children with the resources available to them.
- Digitising the EHC Plan annual review process for schools and education settings so they can easily and quickly submit the paperwork required to the Council.
“We have been working rapidly to make these improvements but, given the scale of the change we needed to make, it took a while before we started to see our efforts reflected in the data,” explained Christine.
August 2024 was the first time in a number of years that the Council had come close to the national average of 50.3% of plans issued within the 20-week deadline, with figures reaching slightly over this at 51.6%.
By October 2024, 76.9% of EHC Plans were issued by the deadline and this has increased to 89.9% as of February 2025.
The number of children and young people with SEND in Kent issued with an EHC Plan within the national 20-week deadline
There is also evidence of improvement in the annual review of EHC Plans.
While schools, nurseries and colleges carry out these reviews, the Council must respond in writing to communicate their decision within four weeks on whether to maintain a child’s EHC Plan, amend it or cease the plan if a child or young person no longer needs the provision set out in the plan.
The percentage of annual reviews heard within expected timescales is now 65% compared with 35% 2 years ago in 2023.
Almost 21,000 children in Kent have an EHC Plane
"We've made considerable progress since 2022, and we are grateful for the support of families along the way.
“We know that a small number of children and young people who need an EHC Plan are still waiting a bit longer than the 20-week deadline but we are fully committed to making sure that children and young people can get the support they need as quickly as possible."
