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Writing Your EHCP Parental Views With AI

4 min read Last reviewed 10 June 2026

Part 6 of the AI for SEND Paperwork series

Ai HelpEHCPSection AParental Views
A parent and child sitting together on the floor at home, the child drawing while the parent makes notes on a phone. AI-generated illustration.
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Section A of the EHCP is the one part written in your voice, holding your child’s views, interests and aspirations alongside your own as their parent. Sitting in front of that empty box is hard precisely because you love them, and the blank page asks you to sum up a whole person. Here’s a calmer way through: write your parental views with the free SEND Parents Help assistant, which interviews you about your real child and helps you turn the answers into your own words.

Start with this prompt

Open the assistant, paste this in, and fill in the brackets. It tells the assistant who your child is, hands over your rough notes, and asks it to interview you before it writes anything.

Your Section A starter prompt 
I’m writing Section A of my child’s EHCP, which is the part about their views, interests and aspirations and my views as their parent. My child is [age] and has [diagnosis or main difficulties]. Here are my rough notes about who they are and what a normal day looks like: [paste or type your notes]. Please interview me with a few questions first to fill in the gaps, then help me draft Section A in my own voice, keeping it specific and true to my child rather than generic.

One tap opens the assistant with this prompt ready. Edit the parts in [square brackets] once you are there. Prefer to do it by hand? Copy it and paste it in yourself.

Open the assistant with this prompt

The assistant asks questions before it drafts, so a rough start is fine. A voice note to yourself in the car counts. New to ChatGPT? Our two-minute account guide gets you a free account, which is all you need. If your notes live in old reports or letters, our free Doc Tools page pulls the text out in your browser, with nothing uploaded, ready to paste in.

What makes a strong Section A

A decision-maker reads hundreds of these, and “he is a lovely, happy boy who likes to play” could be any child. What works is specific and true:

  • It’s the parent’s voice. This is the one section the council can’t rewrite, so describe the child you know, not a case number.
  • It describes a real person. Trade adjectives for examples. “Sociable” is weak; “will talk to anyone about dinosaurs for an hour” is your child. A “day in the life”, a real Tuesday from morning to bedtime, is the strongest spine.
  • It names strengths and aspirations plainly. What your child loves, what they want, and what you hope for them this year and further off, in ordinary words that don’t need to sound grand.
  • It says what a good outcome looks like. Done well, it makes the rest of the plan harder to water down, because the needs and provision that follow are read as belonging to a real child.

A few key facts

  • Section A records your child’s views, interests and aspirations alongside your views as a parent, and comes from you rather than from professional advice (SEND Regulations 2014, Regulation 12).
  • It isn’t legally binding the way Section F (the provision the council must deliver) is, so on its own it won’t win a placement or an hour of therapy. It does carry weight at the annual review and at tribunal, where a vivid, specific Section A reminds the panel what’s at stake.
  • Where rights transfer at 16, a young person can contribute their own views directly.
Important

When you get the draft plan back from the council, you have at least 15 days to comment, so there’s room to ask for changes to how your views were recorded.

Check it yourself before you send

AI can be confidently wrong, and Section A has to be unmistakably yours. Before it goes into your child’s plan:

  • Read every line back as yourself. If a phrase isn’t how you’d ever speak, change it. If a sentence is lovely but isn’t quite true, cut it.
  • Keep your child’s voice and yours separate, and ask the assistant to mark which is which.
  • Check where the section sits on GOV.UK’s overview of EHCPs and what plans should contain in the SEND Code of Practice.

Getting help

You don’t have to do this alone. Draft with the assistant at night, then sense-check with a human in daylight:

  • IPSEA gives free, legally based advice on EHC needs assessments and plans, including what each section should contain.
  • Contact is the charity for families with disabled children, with a freephone helpline and plain-English EHCP guidance.
  • Council for Disabled Children publishes guidance on the SEND system and the EHCP process.

If you’re earlier in the process, our guides on what an EHCP is and whether your child needs one, how to request an EHCP assessment, and finding your feet in the SEND system walk you through the steps around this one.

Sources and further reading

Legislation and official guidance