The starting point is that a disabled child is designated as a "Child in Need" under the Children Act 1989, and therefore they will be entitled to a social care assessment by the Local Authority, to assess what care needs they have and what support is required. From this, a care plan will be developed, which will explain how those needs are going to be met. These needs might be needs like personal care needs in the morning and the evening, or it might be respite care for the parents.
An Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) is a different document, which has a different purpose. Not every disabled child will be entitled to an EHCP and it will depend upon their level of needs within school and the level of additional provision they require.
Where a disabled child does have both an EHCP and a social care plan, the two documents should relate to each other and speak to each other. Details about the child's social care needs and the provision they require under social care should normally be included in Sections D and H of the EHCP, but unfortunately this is not always done and the social care sections of EHCP are often left blank or are not fully completed. However there will still normally be a separate care assessment and care plan that sits alongside the EHCP, where the parents of a disabled child have asked for an assessment.
Conceptually, the EHCP primarily looks at the support a child needs in relation to their special educational needs (which can include social care needs), but the care assessment and care plan will normally contain more detail about the social care needs themselves.
Having an EHCP does not provide the child with any "additional" legal rights in relation to social care provision – the social care assessment and care plan are still standalone documents that can be challenged in their own right. Where an appeal is brought against an EHCP to the First Tier Tribunal, parents can also challenge social care provision as part of that appeal – but the Tribunal can only make non-binding recommendations in relation to social care. It is also possible to challenge a local authority's social care decisions completely separately from the EHCP, by way of judicial review.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
