YOUR CHILD FIRST

Our Services – What we can do…

A 15-minute conversation can change your understanding of how the system works… that being told “no” by a key stakeholder in your child’s life is not the end of the path. There are many ways to move forward… our aim is to always explain, educate, develop your confidence in how to form a positive pathway & begin to get the support your child needs to make the progress they deserve.

The services we offer are bespoke & tailored to the needs of your child. Our service provision and documentation can be significantly impactful and hold great weight in the following:

• active planning for key decision times & meetings – working with you to ensure that you child’s needs & situation are highlighted & considered robustly
• EHCP applications/appeals, notice to cancel EHCP – appeals
• school placement application/appeals
• expert supporting evidence for higher needs funding & funding reviews related to key decisions/junctures
• applications for personal budgets/appeals
• supporting evidence for DLA/PIP award/mandatory reconsideration & appeals for your child
• assessment, analysis, intervention, provision recommendations and program guidance for legal appeals, for example: pre judicial review evidence collation

We can help in numerous other areas that are vital for your child to receive the correct funding, provision & services they need to make progress.… we are happy to work with you to explore your options.

We provide expertise in analysing and assessing the support your child needs & and is currently receiving. If you are not happy with the provision in place, we provide direct support to build your case moving forward; including:

Applications for personal budgets through EHCP’s – analysing/assessing need through exploration of your child’s diagnosis and current situation. When/how to apply and how to form your case, so that your child’s needs are considered carefully and with due diligence by any assessing stakeholder or panel. 

How we can help…

Starting point – a friendly chat to get to know your child, their needs & discuss the issues you are facing (no charge)

Initial Assessment & Pathway Setting:

-Assessment of your child’s current educational, social & emotional and behavioural needs

-Barriers to their progress – lack of support/incorrect provision from school/education. Exploration & analysis of key issues affecting provision, your child’s ability to access learning & how to move forward

-Assessment & advice to empower you to understand the system, key issues present & how to move forward more confidently to get the desired outcomes for your child

-Specific and targeted pathway plan created to streamline and tighten current and future focuses, which can be shared with and utilised by key stakeholders such as school SENCO’s, school leaders, bough advisors/assessors and assessing panel/appeal panel representatives

Lead Consultant Report – summarising all & clearly focusing the pathway forward to achieve goals & to share with all relevant stakeholders on your child’s pathway forward.

Structure of Initial Assessment & Pathway Planning

Step 1 – Telephone/Video call or face to face meeting (if in the east Kent Area) to talk to you, analyse the current provision your child is receiving and any barriers to their progress and identify the pathway forward – Meeting your child if possible/appropriate or can be at a later time.

1hr approximate

Step 2– The service reviews all relevant diagnosis, reports, appeals & educational/medical documentation. Assesses your child’s current situation & future provision requirements based on their needs.

Resulting in sign posting, action planning and pathway forward for the short through to the long term and & consultancy report completed to be shared with all relevant stakeholders as appropriate.

Step 3 – Follow up telephone conversation to explore and define the pathway forward; ensuring that you feel ready to face the barriers inhibiting/blocking the pathway forward for you child, know how to approach key decisions/important meetings about your child and have clarity moving forward.

Package cost of £99

Or £65 if no written report is required and verbal feedback is preferred.

Service Provision & Packages  

Active Planning – problem solving the issues you face & how to move forward

For key decisions & meetings – working to ensure that you child’s needs & situation are highlighted & considered robustly at each stage along the pathway forward.

Being able to confidently communicate what you know your child needs and the method required to achieve it can be very difficult; especially in an education system that puts up barriers very early in your journey.

Your child will face many important “crunch times” where your case and arguments for what you want for your child will need to be detailed, clear & focused – so that all key stakeholders can listen & visualise your child’s situation, needs and future intervention required with clarity and genuinely consider what is required for your child to make progress.

We can help you focus your arguments and build a clear narrative & pathway forward that stakeholders will understand & empower you to present your child’s case with well-planned, crafted and tactical arguments based on the situation, barriers and decisions you are faced with.

We can support you with this through:

Consultancy & Strategy Calls

Telephone or video calls – Formulating strategy in how to approach Key meetings and decisions for your child including:

• What is likely to come up & how to address barriers

• What to detail, discuss, highlight & how to approach the communication with the stakeholder’s present

• Ensuring that all key points/issues relevant are shared clearly with all stakeholders

• Problem solving & active planning the issues present with your child’s situation & likely responses from the key stakeholders present
• exploration and guidance of the documentation & evidence present and clear strategy arguments formulated

As this is a vital part of our service to ensure that our clients are clear, focused and ready for key meetings/decisions & to try to keep this provision affordable for all to access; we have broken the provision down into the following increments:

Up to 15 minutes – £14 (further 5-minute slippage time: free) – suitable for general key meetings – where your child’s current/future needs will be discussed to highlight issues/evidence collected and pathway forward is formed.

20-35 minutes – £24 (further 5-minute time slippage free) – suitable for preparation for more in-depth meetings/decisions where there are multiple issues to be considered, explored and strategized – likely stakeholder attendees who highlight barriers in the way to the desired goals.

40-55 minutes – £34 suitable for highly important decision meetings, such as with Borough advisors, school & education stakeholders (who analyse children’s needs and indicate whether further funding is required or EHCP application is advisable) pre-EHCP application meetings, EHCP appeals, Pre-school placement application, meetings & appeals, EHCP provision, annual reviews/recommendation to cancel EHCP.

60-75 minutes – £40 High level meeting/decision preparation requiring more in-depth discussion and strategy planning.

Attendance & support in key meetings with Stakeholders

Including: School meetings with SENCO’s and senior leaders, borough advisors, SEN panels and any relevant stakeholders to ensure that your child’s needs and requirements are represented clearly, not prejudiced by possibly skewed viewpoints of other stakeholders and your child rights are accounted for robustly. Note 95% of meetings can be attended virtually through TEAMS, ZOOM or other designated platforms and can be attended in person if in the local east Kent area.

You have a right to third party support/representation (family, friend, professional) in school & education meetings – use it whenever you need it.

£40 per hour (Basic travel expenses re-imbursement for in person meetings – to be agreed based on distance)

Core Document Preparation & Writing Services  

Clarifying & Forming A Positive Pathway Forward for Your Child

EHCP Application Preparation

We can support you to build a robust and clear case for why your child requires an EHCP to access the curriculum effectively and make progress. In addition to our consultancy strategy calls, we can provide the following support:

EHCP application writing: If your school is not validating your concerns & have said no to the school directly applying for an EHCP; we can work with you to form a clear and evidence based application that highlights your child’s needs, further analysis of their diagnosis, exploration of their condition & long term effects and clearly explain the provision that is required through the EHCP support process, including:

• collation and analysis of supporting evidence
• consultation and advice to coordinate supporting & subsidiary documentation to be presented to the panel
• writing of the full application  

Package cost: £130

If the collation & analysis of your child’s background documentation has already taken place, during previous service provision:

• Cost £100

Background Information, Needs Analysis & Long-Term Prospective Support Plan

Created through exploratory discussion and consultation with you the parent/s and relevant stakeholders

Through analysis/consultation with all key stakeholders including: clinicians, consultant paediatricians, speech and Language therapists, consultant & educational psychologists and other key professionals working with your child; a comprehensive Background Information, Needs Analysis and long-term support plan is created to drill down into your child’s current/long term situation, diagnosis, resulting needs/interventions & supporting mechanisms required from the short through to long-term.

The analysis and intervention plan focuses on key areas including:

• Background information and early development of your child & how this affects their day to day life and details how barriers have developed to access education effectively

• Diagnosis, cognitive & behavioural traits: What their diagnosis means to you child, cognitive processing analysis and breakdown & resulting barriers to accessing education

• Needs Analysis & Prospective Intervention – detailed analysis of what your child needs to overcome their barriers to learning, detailed intervention analysis and planning to facilitate you child’s access to the curriculum in school effectively

Analysis, breakdown and structured intervention & support plan, including:

• Direct intervention in school through appropriate support such as 1:1 direct teaching/intervention & analysis breakdown of all other interventions needed for your child’s educational, social & emotional development in school

Speech & Language, Communication & Peer/Adult Interaction – intervention and support

• Access to learning barriers – analysis and exploration of the issues surrounding your child’s ability to access the curriculum in school & resulting intervention planning
• Breakdown of your child’s social, emotional and behavioural understanding/development – proposed interventions and pathway forward
• Long term educational and wider care-based support programmes
• Schema/psychological development analysis, breakdown & future intervention

Our lead consultant specialises in analysing and addressing “schemas” which simply put… are the long-term thought processes your child has developed – some of which may result in barriers in their ability to access education effectively and affect their personal, social and emotional relationships.

In addition to the key area focuses above, there will also be focus areas to be analysed, interventions & support plans detailed specific to your child.

This document will be utilised by the school, the SENCO & SEN team to focus individual education plans, applications for Higher needs funding & will have significant weight to educational health care plan applications and appeals. This document will likely be used extensively by the assessing educational psychologist during EHCP applications & ensures that what you want to be included for current and future intervention pathways for your child is considered by all the key stakeholders involved; including those on the assessing panels for EHCP & appeal panels across the education and SEN system. This document also provides clarity for need and resulting intervention in pre judicial review evidence collation & for later stage litigation.

Package cost: £130

Consultant Social Worker Assessment

Consultant Assessments can be highly important & hold great weight during times of key decisions for your child, such as EHCP assessments/appeals, school place applications/appeals, personal budget & provision requests/changes & many other key decision times that affect your child.

We currently have 3 consultant social workers working with our service (please see the ‘service consultants’ section for further information) who can provide expert assessment & analysis of your child’s needs & provide clear recommendations based on social care guidance & policy. The resulting report highlights your child’s needs clearly & must be considered carefully by any panel or decision makers along your child’s education journey.

Assessment structure:

Step 1: 50 minutes (approximate) Video call assessment

Step 2: Consultant assessment of your child’s background documentation & case – Liaising & working with the lead consultant.

Step 3: Report written assessing/analysing your child’s needs following social care guidance/policy and resulting recommendations for intervention and support.

Package cost: £135

Note: any assessment/support services provided are not associated/reported to social services in anyway – all work undertaken is on a freelance consultancy basis only. All assessments, guidance/ intervention planning & reports are provided to the client only – to focus & support your case moving forward and are not shared with any third party (apart from those of your choice) for any reason.

Appeal Documentation – support & document writing services

Preparation & writing of specialist documents to develop your case moving forward

We support clients to develop detailed and clear arguments with assessment, analysis, intervention and forward planning documentation to support legal appeals across the education system, including:

– developing a clear, and detailed case for mediation – pre EHCP SEND tribunal appeal

– SEND Tribunal appeals for Refusal to carry out, create & change an EHCP

– notice/decision to cease an EHCP plan

-providing ‘representation’ & development of necessary supporting documentation for SEND tribunal

– preparation of analysis, assessment, intervention and prospective  programme/s – supporting documentation for Judicial review case development

All general service provision is charged at £40 per hour and set costs for packages and specialised provision/consultancy documents.