EHCP for a Child with Physical Disabilities

Updated 4 July 2026 · Legal citations verified against legislation.gov.uk

For a child with a physical disability, the barriers at school are rarely about ability. They are about a building, a timetable and a staffing rota designed for bodies that work differently from your child's. The good news is that the EHC framework was built for exactly this situation, because it is the one legal process in England that looks at education, health and care in a single assessment. This guide shows parents how to start it and what to put in front of the council.

What physical disability looks like across a school day

Think through one ordinary day. Getting from the gate to the classroom takes longer and costs more energy than it does for anyone else. PE needs adapting or quietly becomes sitting out. Handwriting may be slow or painful, so lessons produce less written work than your child actually knows. Moving between rooms in a five minute changeover, carrying a bag, opening heavy doors, managing stairs when the lift is broken: each is a small obstacle, and a day contains dozens. Toileting and personal care may need adult help, which brings dignity questions no timetable acknowledges.

At home, parents see what the school misses: the pain and exhaustion after a full day of managing a body that will not cooperate, the physio exercises that still need doing in the evening, appointments eating into school weeks and a child who starts to opt out of trips, clubs and friendships because everything takes negotiation. None of this is captured by a spreadsheet of reading levels, which is exactly why you should not let attainment be the only conversation.

The Code of Practice area, and why the whole child matters here

In the SEND Code of Practice's four broad areas of need, physical disability falls under sensory and/or physical needs. But the EHC process is wider than any single label, and that width is your friend. An EHC needs assessment is an education, health and care assessment: regulation 6(1) of the SEND Regulations 2014 obliges the council to gather advice from health and from social care as well as from school and an educational psychologist. The plan that can follow has sections for health needs related to SEN (section C), social care needs (section D) and health and social care provision (sections G, H1 and H2) alongside the educational core. For a physically disabled child, whose school life depends on therapy, equipment and care as much as teaching, that whole-child structure is the entire point. See our walkthrough of the plan's sections A to K for how the pieces fit together.

The legal threshold is "may", twice over

Section 36(8) of the Children and Families Act 2014 requires the council to assess where the child has or may have special educational needs and it may be necessary for provision to be made through an EHC plan. Parliament set the bar at possibility, not proof. A physically disabled child whose access to education relies on equipment, adapted tasks, adult assistance and therapy input clears that bar comfortably, whatever their grades, because the possibility that this web of support may need to be specified and legally secured is obvious on its face. The plan-or-no-plan question comes later, after the evidence is in. Refusing to even look is what the low threshold forbids.

Evidence that carries weight for a physically disabled child

Paragraph 9.14 of the SEND Code of Practice lists what councils should weigh when deciding whether to assess, including the nature and extent of the child's needs, what the school has done, whether progress depends on additional intervention and the child's physical, emotional and social development. Make that list work for you with concrete, dated material:

• Consultant, physiotherapy and occupational therapy reports, with dates and recommendations
• An equipment inventory: what your child uses, who provided it, what is missing or outgrown
• Access incidents with dates: lift out of order, trips missed, PE lessons spent watching, late arrivals to lessons because corridors were impassable
• Frequency of adult support: help needed for toileting, dressing for PE, cutting up food, moving between rooms
• A fatigue and pain diary: evenings lost to recovery, days off after busy days, exercises not done because your child was spent
• Therapy appointments and the schooling missed to attend them

Under regulation 7(b) the council must take account of information you send in yourself, including private therapy reports. Our general guide on what evidence to gather pairs well with this list.

Naming physio and OT under regulation 6(1)

Regulation 6(1) requires the council, during the assessment, to seek advice from any person the parent reasonably requests. Use it deliberately. Name your child's physiotherapist and occupational therapist in the request letter, plus the consultant who oversees their condition and the school nurse or continence service where personal care is involved. Therapy advice matters beyond the assessment too: where physiotherapy or OT educates or trains your child, it can be specified in section F of the plan, and section 42 of the Act then obliges the council to secure it. That is the difference between "the school will try to fit exercises in" and provision your child receives as of right.

School transport: a separate right, worth claiming now

Many parents assume transport help arrives only with a plan. It does not. Under the gov.uk home-to-school transport rules, a compulsory-school-age child qualifies for free transport if the nearest suitable school is more than 2 miles away (under 8) or 3 miles away (8 and over), and regardless of distance if there is no safe walking route or the child cannot walk to school because of their special educational needs, disabilities or a mobility problem. That last limb is the one that matters here: if your child cannot manage the walk, distance is irrelevant. Apply through the local council, and read our guide to EHCPs and school transport for the details.

Brush-offs to recognise and refuse

"He is making progress, so there is no need to assess" ignores that the progress may exist only because of the support scaffolding around him, which is one of the paragraph 9.14 considerations. "The school's notional SEN budget should cover it" is a funding argument, and funding does not appear anywhere in section 36(8). "We do not assess children with purely physical needs" or "medical needs are for the NHS, not an EHCP" both misdescribe a process that was explicitly designed to join education, health and care together, and as across-the-board rules they fall foul of the ban on blanket policies. Any refusal must reach you within 6 weeks with appeal rights and mediation information attached (regulations 5(1) and 5(3)), and you can appeal on form SEND35A with no fee.

Frequently asked questions