PLANS which help students with special educational needs are not being produced in time in Oxfordshire, and the coronavirus outbreak means improvements could be delayed.

Education Health and Care plans are legal documents which are put together to help students who have special educational, social or medical needs to go to school.

Oxfordshire County Council sets a target that 75 per cent of these plans should be written up in a 20-week limit once a formal process has begun.

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But 43 per cent of the plans are not being finished in this time, as of January.

The county council cabinet discussed the delay in EHC plans on Tuesday.

Performance scrutiny committee chair Liz Brighouse told the committee there was a similar picture across England.

She added she was hoping to work with the council's education scrutiny committee to look at how other councils had made improvements.

Cabinet member for education Lorraine Lindsay-Gale said staff were 'on track to make significant improvements' before the coronavirus outbreak.

Witney Gazette:

Lorraine Lindsay-Gale

According to the council’s business management and monitoring report for January, demand for EHC plans has risen in the last year, with requests rising from 777 in 2018, to 1,027 in 2019.

But not all of these requests led to EHC plans being made.

On top of this, staff sicknesses and the Christmas holidays had contributed to the delay.

Council staff have been prioritising meeting the 20-week target is met since January.

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This has included meetings of education chiefs to make sure the council is on track to finish as many of the documents as soon as possible.

According to Contact, a charity for families with disabled children, EHC plans are important because they ‘explain the extra help that will be given to meet a child’s needs and how that help will support the child to achieve what they want to in their life’.

Every three months, the council monitors how well it follows different goals in its corporate plan using a Red, Amber and Green colour coding system.

EHC plan completion is currently ranked red.

All other education targets are either ranked green or amber.

This includes children with protection plans (green) and the prevalence of healthy children (amber).