EHCP Section G: Health Provision and How to Get It Right

Section G is one of the least understood parts of an EHCP, and one of the most frequently underdeveloped. It is supposed to set out the health provision the local Integrated Care Board (ICB) has agreed to make in response to your child's health needs. In practice, it is often blank, vague, or filled with the same kind of unenforceable language that SEND parents spend years fighting in Section F.

Understanding what Section G should contain — and what happens when it does not — matters for any family where a child's educational needs are intertwined with medical or therapeutic needs.

What Section G Is For

Every EHCP is structured around a set of interlocking sections that address needs and provision in three areas: education, health, and social care. The logic is that a child's needs are not purely educational — a child with autism, for instance, may have both educational needs that schools must address and health needs (such as support for sensory regulation, mental health, or communication) that the NHS or ICB should commission.

• Section C describes the child's health needs as they relate to their SEN. It summarises the relevant health conditions, diagnoses, and the health-related difficulties that affect the child's functioning.
• Section G sets out the health provision that will be made to meet those needs — the specific services, assessments, and therapeutic interventions the ICB has agreed to commission.

The two sections must align. If Section C identifies, for example, that a child has significant sensory processing difficulties arising from autism that affect their ability to access the school environment, Section G should specify what health-funded provision will address that — such as occupational therapy sessions, sensory audits, or specialist advisory support from a community paediatrician.

The Problem: Why Section G Is Often Empty or Useless

In many EHCPs, Section G contains one of the following:

• Nothing at all
• A generic statement such as "Health services will be available through the usual NHS pathways"
• A reference to existing NHS appointments without specifying who will deliver what, how often, or with what objective

These are not acceptable. The SEND Code of Practice is explicit (paragraphs 9.73 and 10.33) that all sections of the EHCP, including health provision, must be "specific, detailed, and quantified." Health provision is not exempt from the specificity requirement simply because it is commissioned by a different body.

If Section G is empty because the Designated Clinical Officer (DCO) or Designated Medical Officer (DMO) did not submit advice within the assessment period, that is a failure in the process — not a reason to leave the section blank. The LA is responsible for chasing statutory health advice from the ICB during the EHC needs assessment; a missing health report should trigger active follow-up, not a gap in the final EHCP.

The Role of the Designated Clinical Officer

Every local Integrated Care Board is required to employ or contract a Designated Clinical Officer (DCO) — sometimes called a Designated Medical Officer (DMO). The DCO plays a specific statutory role in the EHCP process:

• Ensuring that health professionals provide advice within the 6-week window during EHC needs assessments
• Coordinating health-related input into the EHCP
• Signing off on the health sections of the EHCP (Sections C and G)
• Resolving disputes between health commissioners about what provision the ICB will fund
• Acting as the health system's senior point of contact for SEND

If you are struggling to understand why Section G is inadequate, or who is responsible for commissioning the health provision your child needs, the DCO is the correct person to escalate to within the health system. Most ICBs publish their DCO's contact details on their SEND local offer pages.

What Good Section G Provision Looks Like

The same specificity standards that apply to educational provision in Section F apply to health provision in Section G. Good Section G wording answers:

• What is the provision? (e.g., specialist occupational therapy; community paediatric review; mental health support from CAMHS)
• Who will deliver it? (e.g., an HCPC-registered Occupational Therapist employed by or under contract with the ICB, not "a health professional" or "the relevant team")
• How often? (e.g., fortnightly 45-minute direct OT sessions during term time; annual review by the community paediatrician; monthly review by the school-based CAMHS worker)
• Where? (e.g., at the child's school; at the ICB community clinic; in the home)
• For how long? (academic year, or until a specific review point, rather than "ongoing" without definition)

Compare:

Weak/unlawful: "The child will have access to occupational therapy as clinically required through NHS community services."

Specific/lawful: "The child will receive direct 1:1 occupational therapy sessions of 45 minutes duration, delivered fortnightly by an HCPC-registered Occupational Therapist from [ICB Community OT Service], focusing on the development of self-regulation strategies and fine motor skills to enable access to the curriculum. Progress will be reviewed termly by the OT in collaboration with the SENCO."

When Health Provision Is Not Delivered

This is where Section G becomes particularly complicated. Unlike Section F provision — which the local authority has an absolute legal duty to secure under Section 42(2) of the Children and Families Act 2014 — health provision in Section G is commissioned by the ICB, not the LA.

If health provision specified in Section G is not being delivered, the responsible body is the ICB, not the local authority. This means:

• Enforcement routes differ. You cannot appeal to the SEND Tribunal specifically about the failure to deliver Section G health provision. The Tribunal's jurisdiction covers Section F (educational provision) and Section I (placement). Section G is outside its direct remit.
• The appropriate enforcement routes for Section G failures are: formal complaint to the ICB, complaint to NHS England, or referral to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO).

However — and this is important — if health provision that your child genuinely needs to access their education is failing, and that failure is affecting the educational provision in Section F, you can make that argument in the context of an EHCP appeal. The interconnected nature of health and educational needs means that inadequate health provision often produces demonstrably inadequate educational outcomes, which are Tribunal-relevant.

Getting Section G Strengthened

If the Section G in your child's current EHCP is inadequate, the most direct route is to raise it at the Annual Review. Annual Reviews are the formal mechanism for reviewing and updating an EHCP, and the health sections are as open to amendment as the educational sections.

Before the Annual Review, contact the DCO and request that a health professional who knows your child attends or submits a written update. If your child has been receiving NHS therapy services, ask the relevant therapist to provide a brief report on current needs and recommended provision for the coming year. This gives you current, professional evidence to support a request for more specific Section G wording.

If the Annual Review process fails to produce adequate health provision, and that provision is directly connected to your child's ability to access education, raise it in any EHCP content appeal alongside the Section F and Section I issues.

The England SEND Tribunal Playbook covers the full EHCP section-by-section review process, including how to identify unlawful vagueness across Sections B, F, G, and I — and what to do about it at Annual Review or Tribunal.

A Note on CAMHS and Therapy Waiting Lists

One of the most common reasons Section G is left vague is that the health provision the child needs — most commonly CAMHS support, speech and language therapy, or occupational therapy — has not been commissioned because NHS waiting lists mean the child is not yet receiving it.

An NHS waiting list is not a reason to omit provision from an EHCP. The EHCP should specify what provision the child needs and what the ICB will commission to meet those needs. If there is a waiting list, the EHCP should record both the provision to be made and the ICB's commitment to provide it. The child's needs do not wait for the waiting list to clear; the EHCP should capture what the child needs now, and the ICB should be chasing its own providers to deliver it.

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