How to Write Parental Views for an EHC Needs Assessment

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

Of everything in an EHC needs assessment request, parental views are the one document nobody else can write. Professionals see your child in clinic appointments and classroom snapshots. You see the morning battles, the after-school shutdowns and the homework that ends in tears. You hold years of daily observation, and the law treats what you know as evidence, not as background noise. This guide shows how to structure parental views so that a busy decision-maker can see what you see.

Why parental views carry legal weight

Three provisions put your voice inside the statutory process rather than at its edges. Paragraph 9.12 of the SEND Code of Practice 2015 tells local authorities to pay particular attention to the views, wishes and feelings of the child and the parent. Regulation 6(1) of the SEND Regulations 2014 requires the council, when it assesses, to seek advice from the parent alongside the school, an educational psychologist, health and social care. And regulation 7(b) requires the council to consider any information provided by the parent or at the parent's request. Parental views are not a courtesy attachment. They are part of the evidence base the council is obliged to weigh, both when deciding whether to assess and during the assessment itself.

Structure them around the four areas of need

The SEND Code of Practice organises special educational needs into four broad areas, and professionals across education and health use them constantly:

• Communication and interaction
• Cognition and learning
• Social, emotional and mental health
• Sensory and/or physical

Using these four headings does two jobs at once. It makes your document instantly navigable for the people reading it, because you are speaking their working language. And it prompts you to cover ground you might otherwise skip: a child known for struggles in one area often has quieter difficulties in another that never make it into school records. Not every area will apply to every child. Where one genuinely does not, say so in a sentence and move on. That honesty strengthens everything else you write. Give each area a short paragraph or a set of bullets rather than an essay: you are building a picture, not writing a novel.

Turn home reality into evidence

The gap between what you live and what you write is where most parental views lose power. Three tools close it.

Frequencies. "Struggles at bedtime" becomes "takes over an hour to settle most nights and wakes 2 or 3 times". "Hates school" becomes "cries on the way to school 3 or 4 mornings a week". A frequency turns an impression into a data point that can sit alongside the professional reports.

Dated incidents. A short list of specific events, each with a date and a one-line description of what happened, reads as a record rather than a recollection. If the school logged the incident too, say so, because a claim that can be checked against someone else's record carries extra weight.

Your child's own words. Quote them exactly, in quotation marks, whether it is what they say about school on a Sunday evening or how they describe themselves after a hard day. Paragraph 9.12 asks the council to pay particular attention to the child's views, wishes and feelings, and for a young child, quotes are often how those views reach the page at all.

If writing does not come easily, speak your notes into your phone for a week and tidy them up afterwards. The evidence is already in your days; the job is only to get it onto paper.

The section most parents miss: support already provided and its impact

Paragraph 9.14 of the Code tells councils to pay particular attention to whether the school has taken relevant and purposeful action and whether progress, where it happened, came only because of support over and above what is usually provided. Your views should meet that head on. List what has been put in place at school and at home, when each thing started and what changed as a result. If something helped only while it lasted, say exactly that. And if you are effectively providing one-to-one support at home every evening to keep your child afloat, write it down: that is provision too, it is invisible to the school data and the council should hear about it from the only people who can report it.

Include the balance: strengths and what works

A document that is all difficulty reads as advocacy. A document that includes your child's humour, interests and the settings where they thrive reads as observation, and observation is harder to discount. Strengths are also practically useful: where your child succeeds tells professionals what conditions work, which feeds directly into what provision should look like. Balance does not mean dilution. It means the difficulties you describe sit inside a real, three-dimensional child, which is exactly what makes them credible.

Finish by showing the threshold is met

End with a short section that pulls the evidence together against the law. The council must secure an assessment where a child has or may have special educational needs and where it may be necessary for special educational provision to be made through an EHC plan (section 36(8) of the Children and Families Act 2014). Map what you have written to the matters in paragraph 9.14: attainment and rate of progress, the nature, extent and context of the needs, the action the school has taken and its results, the evidence that progress depended on extra support and your child's physical, emotional and social development and health needs. Then say it outright: "For these reasons [child] may have special educational needs and it may be necessary for special educational provision to be made through an EHC plan." Do not be shy about echoing the statute. That sentence is the decision you are asking the council to reach.

Parental views travel with a covering letter that does the formal legal work, so pair this document with our guide to what to include in the request letter. Together they make a request the council has to engage with properly, and if the system still says no, the same document becomes the backbone of your appeal.

Frequently asked questions