The Impact of Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) on Children Looked After (CLA) and Children in Need (CIN): Pathways and Pitfalls of Improving O

Children who come into contact with the care system are
one of the lowest performing groups in terms of
educational outcomes internationally (Sebba and Luke,
2019). They also go on to have poorer employment
prospects (Hook & Courtney, 2011) and health outcomes
(Dixon, 2008) than the wider population and are over represented in the homeless (Davison & Burris, 2014) and
prison populations (Centre for Social Justice, 2015). Since
September 2014, EHCPs were introduced for children who
have complex special educational needs and disabilities
(SEND), which aim to improve some of these outcomes.
Around half of Children Looked After (CLA) and Children in
Need (CIN) have an identified special educational need
(SEN) and are much more likely to have an EHCP than all
children (Nat. Stats., 2022).
The aim of EHCPs is to coordinate the support for the child
in a way that focuses on desired outcomes including, as
they get older, preparation for adulthood. If successful, this
should lead to better outcomes for these children - a thesis
this PhD study seeks to test through a mixed methods
difference-in-differences research design, using a
combination of administrative data held by government,
and advanced quantitative methods, complemented with
an interdisciplinary, mixed methods approach. While there
is an emerging body of research into EHCPs (e.g. Ahad et
al., 2022), no study has yet evaluated the impact of EHCPs
on children's outcomes - making this the first study of its
kind.