Devon County Council (DCC) are working to identify improvements to the process of requesting and receiving an Education Health and Care (EHC) plan. This work is part of our transformation of our whole SEND system. It is seeking to improve the timeliness and quality of EHC plans as well as how we communicate with parents.
DCC user research team have been working with DCC’s 0 to 25 team to map out the processes they currently follow. The team now want input on those mapped processes from parents and carers involved in the process. They want to map parent-carers’ journeys, experiences, thoughts, and feelings. They have emailed parent-carers who are registered on the online EHC Hub inviting them to take part in one-to-one interviews this month. They want to extend this invite to all parent-carers who have had experience of the EHC plan process in Devon.
How to get involved
The current round of one-to-one interviews will take around an hour. They will be held remotely, using Microsoft Teams, at a time and date that suits parent-carers. This includes in the evenings or at weekends.
If you are a parent-carer interested in taking part this month, please complete the form below with your interest and availability by 5pm on Friday 11 December.
Or use this link to open the form.
We will select participants at random and contact them by email to arrange a time that suits them.
We are also holding further activities for those parent-carers unable to take part this time, offering them the option to have their say on the process.
If you are interested in taking part in future work, please use the form above and select the option “Other – evenings and weekends” so we can contact you about future opportunities.
January in-person workshop
After the interviews we plan to host an in-person workshop with 20 participants where we will share and discuss the findings before looking at potential changes. This workshop will be held on Wednesday 17 January in the Newton Abbot area and will last roughly four hours. Lunch and refreshments will be provided.
We will provide further information, including how parent-carers can register their interest in the workshop, shortly.
More information about our SEND transformation
You can discover more about our whole-system transformation, and the work involved to deliver it, in the ‘working together’ section of the Devon SEND Local Offer.