Abstract
The focus on the voice of children with special educational needs has received increased recognition internationally both in policy
and research. In England, this was depicted in the new special educational needs framework introduced in 2014. As part of this
new policy, children with disabilities and/or additional needs can receive an Education Health and Care (EHC) plan. The EHC plan is a
single document that should describe the children’s strengths and needs in a multi-disciplinary and holistic way. Section A of the EHC
plan should describe the child’s own perspective. In this context there is much need for evidence on the quality of these new plans
and in particular on the quality of the depictions of children’s voices. The aim of this study was to address this knowledge gap by
analysing the depictions of children’s voices and the process by which these were gathered in 184 EHC plans of children with SEND
attending mainstream and special schools in the Greater London area.
The content analysis of the section concerning the children’s voices was conducted using the categories of a multi-dimensional
classification system, which includes aspects relating to the child herself, but also to her environment and relationships – the
International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). The findings revealed high levels of variability in the way the
voices of children were captured, including the methods used to ascertain their views. Additionally, the type of school that the
child was attending seemed to play a significant role on how his/ her voice was captured, favouring mainstream schools. The
findings of the present study provide the first set of evidence-based data concerning the quality of the content of the newly
introduced EHC plans and are discussed in the light of the implications they have for policy and practice.
© 2018 The Authors. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
and research. In England, this was depicted in the new special educational needs framework introduced in 2014. As part of this
new policy, children with disabilities and/or additional needs can receive an Education Health and Care (EHC) plan. The EHC plan is a
single document that should describe the children’s strengths and needs in a multi-disciplinary and holistic way. Section A of the EHC
plan should describe the child’s own perspective. In this context there is much need for evidence on the quality of these new plans
and in particular on the quality of the depictions of children’s voices. The aim of this study was to address this knowledge gap by
analysing the depictions of children’s voices and the process by which these were gathered in 184 EHC plans of children with SEND
attending mainstream and special schools in the Greater London area.
The content analysis of the section concerning the children’s voices was conducted using the categories of a multi-dimensional
classification system, which includes aspects relating to the child herself, but also to her environment and relationships – the
International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). The findings revealed high levels of variability in the way the
voices of children were captured, including the methods used to ascertain their views. Additionally, the type of school that the
child was attending seemed to play a significant role on how his/ her voice was captured, favouring mainstream schools. The
findings of the present study provide the first set of evidence-based data concerning the quality of the content of the newly
introduced EHC plans and are discussed in the light of the implications they have for policy and practice.
© 2018 The Authors. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 21 |
| Journal | Frontiers in Education |
| Volume | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 19 Apr 2018 |