Join our Education Health and Care Plan Portal user testing group!

Are you a parent or carer of a child or young person with additional needs or disabilities who has had recent experience of the Education Health and Care Needs Assessment (EHCNA) process?

We are looking for up to 50 families to help test and build a new Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP) Portal. We want to capture your feedback to ensure the new platform is accessible. The new EHCP Portal is being developed to improve how parent/carers can access their child's EHCP information and documents. This new platform is like a dashboard, allowing secure communication between parent/carers and the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) department.

To be considered you must meet one of the following criteria:

• An EHCNA has been requested for your child and statutory assessment has been agreed
• EHCP governance has agreed to issue a draft EHCP and the draft EHCP is moving towards being finalised
• A final EHCP was issued for your child 11 months ago, and the review is due
• You are completing the Annual Review, including the draft amended EHCP and final amended EHCP being issued

What will be involved?

If you are selected to become part of the user testing group, you will:

• Have access to the test system which you will be asked to try out and give feedback on.
• Join a weekly online individual session with the Surrey County Council (SCC) Programme and IT lead. Work alongside them to see the changes and improvements happen as you go through the process.
• Attend a monthly one hour online group meeting with the SCC Programme team and the other user testers, to help join up thinking and aid discussion around the portal to support the development work.

Please note: You must be able to commit to attending the online weekly individual sessions. These will be arranged on Teams at a time and day that suits you, starting from June 2025 for up to 8 to 12 weeks, with flexibility as needed. You must also be able to attend the monthly group session which will also be arranged to be as convenient as possible.

Why get involved?

SCC recognise that this is a big commitment and understand that parent/carers have many demands on their time.

By getting involved you are:

• Helping to represent what parent/carers want from the new portal, enabling SCC to ensure that the new portal reflects parents needs
• Helping SCC test the useability of the portal so that they can fix any glitches ahead of its launch
• Ensuring the portal is accessible and easy for parent/carers to navigate

Following this trial and early development based on your feedback, more families will be invited to have access and test the system. Eventually all families in Surrey will have access to the new portal once it goes live.

Register your interest

Sign up for the EHCP Portal user testing group

The project team will review and manage all the submissions to ensure that the user group is made up of participants that are representative of our parent/carer community.

If selected, you will initially be offered a short introductory call to meet the people involved. This will give you a chance to ask any questions and confirm you want to go ahead. For those who are not selected, we will be in touch with further opportunities to join the project in the coming rounds of development.