One of the most fundamental aspects of writing or quality assuring an EHCP is ensuring that specific types of information in one place have corresponding information in other places. For example, if a child is identified as having expressive language difficulties, they will clearly need some sort of intervention to address this need, which will have an expected outcome or result i.e. the child will be able to do something they couldn’t do previously.

In practice, this means that there must be correspondence in an EHCP between:

• the educational, health and care needs (difficulties) described in Sections B, C and D
• the special educational, health and care provision (support) included in Sections F, G and H
• the outcomes (expected result/change) set out in Section E (which should also reflect the aspirations of the child/young person and family in Section A)

Common issues

Showing the connections between difficulties, support required and expected outcomes therefore involves the ‘matching up’ of information in different sections of an EHCP. This is not always as straightforward as it sounds, largely due to either confusion about the meaning of the terms aspirations, needs, outcomes and provision, or there being missing information in the statutory assessment reports (but being able to identify and flag up any missing information also depends on having an accurate understanding of the meaning of these terms).

For example, ‘needs’ is often misunderstood as referring to what a child/young person requires or needs to have in place (i.e. provision), or what they need to be able to improve (i.e. outcomes), when actually ‘needs’ refers to difficulties or barriers. Another example of misunderstanding is when information is placed in Section E as an outcome, when it is actually referring to provision e.g. ‘Simon’s medical condition will be monitored’.

This connection between aspirations, needs, outcomes and provision in an EHCP is called the Golden Thread. All EHCPs should have a clear Golden Thread to ensure there are no gaps in what should be a holistic picture of what the child/young person has difficulties with and therefore needs to receive support for.

‘Matching up’ checklist

The process of checking for connections may need to be done both in sequence and in reverse. For example, connecting needs described in Section B with related provision set out later in F, and also working backwards from Section F to ensure all provision has a matching outcome in E, to ensure full matching up between sections. The following checklist is useful for this matching up process:

• Are all identified educational needs described in Section B?
• Does Section E include outcomes that cover all of the needs identified in Section B?
• Do outcomes in Section E also reflect the child/young person and their family’s long-term aspirations set out in Section A?
• Is there educational provision in Section F to address all identified needs in Section B?
• Does the educational provision in Section F have a matching outcome in Section E?
• Are all health-related needs described in Section C?
• Do these health needs have a corresponding outcome (either in Section E or G, depending on the template format)?
• Is there health provision in Section G to address all identified needs in Section C?
• Are all social care-related needs described in Section D?
• Do these care needs have a corresponding outcome (either in Section E or H, depending on the template format)?
• Is there social care provision in Section H to address all identified needs in Section D?

Want to learn more about writing EHCPs?

For more guidance, strategies and good practice around plan writing, explore our online, CPD accredited EHCP writing courses here.