Getting an EHC needs assessment for an under-5

If your child needs more help than their nursery or childminder can give from their own resources, you can ask your council to assess them. You do not need a diagnosis, and you do not need anyone’s permission to ask.

What an EHC needs assessment actually is

An EHC needs assessment is the council gathering evidence about your child from everyone who knows them — you, their nursery or childminder, health professionals, and any therapists involved — to work out what their needs are and what support they require.

It is a process, not a document. At the end of it, the council decides whether to issue an Education, Health and Care plan (an EHCP). An EHCP is a legal document. What it says the council must provide, the council must actually provide.

That last point is why this matters. Support given informally can quietly disappear when a member of staff leaves or a budget tightens. Support written into an EHCP cannot.

You don’t need a diagnosis, and you don’t need permission

Two things stop more parents than anything else. Both are myths.

“We have to wait for the autism assessment first.” You do not. The legal test has nothing to do with diagnosis. It is whether your child may have special educational needs, and whether those needs may call for support to be set out in a plan. A child on a three-year diagnostic waiting list can have an EHCP long before they have a diagnosis — and often should.

“The nursery said they’d do it when they think he’s ready.” A setting can make a request, and it helps when they do. But your right to ask is your own. You do not need their agreement, their sign-off, or their timing.

You are also allowed to ask even if someone has told you it is “too early”. Plans can be issued from birth. For a child with significant needs, having support in place before they start school is the entire point — not something to sort out afterwards.

What usually happens first: SEN support

Before or alongside an assessment request, your child’s setting should be using what the SEND Code of Practice calls the graduated approach. In plain terms, a four-step cycle that repeats:

1. Assess

   The setting works out what your child finds difficult and why — through observation, talking to you, and sometimes an outside professional.

2. Plan

   They agree with you what support will be put in place, who will do it, and when it will be reviewed.

3. Do

   They actually deliver it.

4. Review

   They look at whether it worked, and start again with what they have learned.

This is worth understanding for one practical reason: the record it produces is your evidence. When you request an assessment, “we have been round this cycle four times and the gap is still widening” is a far stronger case than “I am worried”.

Most early years settings can also call on an Area SENCo — a specialist employed by the council to advise settings. If nobody has mentioned one, it is a reasonable thing to ask about.

How to ask

The request goes to the SEN team at your local council. It should be in writing, so there is a dated record of when the clock started.

A good request does four things:

• Says clearly that you are requesting an EHC needs assessment under section 36 of the Children and Families Act 2014.
• Describes what your child finds difficult, in specific everyday terms. Not “struggles socially” but “leaves the room during group singing and has done since September”.
• Says what has already been tried, and that it has not been enough.
• Lists who else is involved — health visitor, speech therapist, paediatrician, the setting’s SENCo.

Be concrete and be unglamorous. The person reading it has fifty of these. Specific detail about your actual child is what makes yours land.

Send it by email if you can, and ask for confirmation of receipt. Keep a copy.

The six-week decision

From the day the council receives your request, it has six weeks to tell you whether it is going to carry out an assessment.

During those six weeks it will usually ask your child’s setting for information, and may ask you for more detail. Answer quickly — it keeps things moving.

At the end you will get one of two answers:

If six weeks pass with no answer at all, chase it in writing. Deadlines missed quietly tend to stay missed.

If they say yes: the twenty-week timetable

The whole process — from your request to a final plan landing on your doormat — must take no more than twenty weeks.

If they say no

Refusals are common. They are also frequently overturned, so treat a no as a stage rather than an ending.

You can be refused at two points: at six weeks (they will not assess) or at sixteen weeks (they assessed but will not issue a plan). Both carry the same rights.

1. Read the reasons properly

   Councils sometimes refuse on grounds that do not match the legal test — for example that your child is “too young”, or has no diagnosis, or is “making progress”. None of those are, on their own, lawful reasons.

2. Contact a mediation adviser

   Before you can appeal you must contact an independent mediation adviser and get a certificate. You do not have to go through with mediation — you just have to have the conversation and get the certificate. It is free.

3. Appeal to the SEND Tribunal

   You normally have two months from the decision letter, or one month from the mediation certificate, whichever is later. The Tribunal is independent of the council. It is free to appeal and you do not need a solicitor.

What to do while you wait

Twenty weeks is a long time when your child needs help now. Some of it can be used well.

• Keep the graduated approach going. Support should not pause because an assessment is under way.
• Ask about the Disability Access Fund if your child is 3 or 4 and receives Disability Living Allowance. It is a yearly payment to their setting to help with inclusion.
• Look up your council’s Local Offer. Every council must publish what support is available locally. Quality varies enormously, but it is worth an hour.
• Ask for reasonable adjustments now. Separate from any of this, your child’s setting has duties under the Equality Act 2010. Our reasonable adjustments letter puts that request in writing.
• Chase deadlines in writing. Politely, and in a way that leaves a record.

Where to go next