Drafting Coraline's Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP)

Blogging question: “What is the most difficult thing you have had to deal with related to Coraline lately?”

The issuing of Coraline’s Education, Health and Care Plan in June 2021

I have been working on Coraline’s Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP) since December 2020, and it has just been legally finalised in June 2021.

It is regularly reviewed (six monthly until she turns 5 years old, and then at least an annual review). It will be in place until she leaves education or until she is aged 25.

This has been the most difficult thing I have had to deal with lately for Coraline.

The EHCP process

It has been an intense learning curve. I have attended numerous webinars and sought the help of three different advisors from charities. The Education, Health and Care Plan describes Coraline’s special educational needs (SEN), the support (special educational provisions) she requires and the outcomes aimed for.

It is put together by a Co-Ordinator with the involvement of all of Coraline’s therapists and us, her parents. Even now that it’s finalised, I feel confused by what the content of it means in terms of 1-1 support for Coraline.

Before I began it, I heard that people dread the EHCP process and how difficult it is and I thought, “no, that won’t be me; I will apply my customary optimism, diligence, trust and effort.”

Form filling as a parent of a child with a disability

Here’s what I was saying to Kevin last Friday morning, six months in:

Me: It’s not fair. How are you supposed to understand the language? They make it so confusing. The odds are stacked against you. It’s so hard. And I’ve done this for the 40 page Disability Living Allowance (DLA) form and the Mobility Allowance (MA) Form. And even me, with all my might, all my focus, all my investigation, I can’t get it right. The DLA and MA both got rejected.
Kevin: Yes, but then they got approved when you appealed
Me: It takes so much time. You don’t understand, you’re not doing it. It takes all my time. Why do they make it so hard?
Kevin: It’s OK, it’s important to vent. Just get it all out
Me: I just can’t do it anymore. It’s too hard. I hate it. I hate what they think of me for the intense emails I send, how I sound in them and the fact that I have to send them in the first place. I hate being pushy about all the forms.
Kevin: I know it’s hard Liz. But it will get easier
Me: It won’t Kevin. This is how it is. It’s just going to get worse
Kevin: But she’s our Mini. I know you do all this because you love her, and you do a brilliant job on the forms
Me: But I can’t do anything else but this. I don’t have time. It’s not fair.

Exhaustion around the Education, Health and Care Plan process

What Kevin does is encourage me to have the feelings, even if they are uncomfortable to feel, and to let them all come. Then, invariably, he makes me laugh!

A friend who has also done an EHCP reminded me this morning, “it’s so important to feel the feelings around it and to let them out and express them; then the key thing is to let them go and release them to the universe”.

It suddenly became clear I had been feeling the feelings of sadness, upset, uncomfortableness, doubt, exhaustion, worry, stress, but I had been staying stuck in that mindset. I had begun to complain. Not only this, I had begun to compare. And complain. And then compare.

Today my friend brought me back to what I know how to do. It is what Kevin has said to me time and again. Feel the feelings and let them pass through. There is a book Kevin loves called “The Untethered Soul” by Michael Singer. There is a Chapter in it called “Let Go Now or Fall”.

Reframing the EHCP experience

I know that I need to let go of my negative thought loop and reframe my experience. I know that I can pull myself back by doing this. I use an exercise my goals coaches have taught me from Bob Proctor’s coaching material; write out the experience as it currently feels and underline all the non-productive actions. Then write out the experience as I would ideally like it to be in the present tense and highlight all the productive actions. Then begin to replace each non-productive action with a productive thought or action. For me, it is an awareness, and a chink in the picture, where I begin to focus on all that I have achieved, and all that I did do well for the EHCP.

Shifting my energy

My first description about the EHCP had been despair at what people thought of me, at the mess I had made, how I had failed and how tired I felt. In my “ideal reality” description I wrote that I was proud of all I had done, I had done my absolute best, I had attended so many EHCP webinars to know what to look out for, I had done my best asking others to help me and I had acted on their feedback, and everybody respected me.

When I step back, I allow the good back in and I send the right energy out again. I hold on to the vision I have for Coraline and believe it will come, in ways that I might not yet understand.