Inequalities of the Waiting Time for Education Health and Care Plan Provision for Pupils With Intellectual...

Children and young people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDDs) face challenges across various aspects of their lives and require significant support, particularly in the field of education. In the United Kingdom, Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) support those with special educational needs (SEN) in schools. Disparities exist throughout our national educational system with respect to how long pupils with IDDs must wait for an EHCP, but the socio-demographic influences on those disparities are currently unknown. Delays in providing EHCP support result in negative educational, wellbeing and developmental outcomes. Using data from the National Pupil Database (NPD), we examined variabilities in waiting times for EHCP provision, and correlations with potentially influential variables such as SEN classification, family socio-economic status, region of domicile and ethnicity.

This national study recruited 2131 participants [6-28 years old, mean (SD) = 14.1 (4.4) years] with IDDs associated with a genetic condition. Families gave consent for their child's educational records to be reviewed by the research team. All participants had received an EHCP at some point during their full-time education in England. We accessed the NPD (provided by the UK Department for Education), for details of participants' primary SEN type, free school meal eligibility, ethnicity and the academic year in which they received an EHCP. Based on their home address postcode, we assigned to each family an index of multiple deprivation (IMD) score. From the NPD, we calculated the waiting time between a child's recommendation for an EHCP and the time they received it. We compared these data with IMD scores, primary SEN type, free school meal eligibility, English region of domicile, ethnicity, and sex. We used linear regression models to examine the associations between the predictors (the above demographic independent variables) and the duration of time it took for children to receive an EHCP.

Participants with IDDs of genetic aetiology who lived in the most socially deprived regions of England waited longer for EHCP support than those in the least deprived regions, irrespective of the NPD classification of the child's SEN type. Neither the child's ethnicity nor their sex had any added impact. Whatever their IMD status, participants living in London obtained an EHCP more quickly than those living elsewhere in England.

There are nationwide inconsistencies in the time taken to provide EHCPs to children and young people whose intellectual impairments are of known genetic aetiology. Regional inequalities in the funds available to local education authorities could be a major contributory factor.