The email or letter arrives and there it is: a blank box labelled “parental views” and a deadline. You know your child better than anyone in that building. You know the look on their face when something finally clicks, the exact kind of Tuesday that breaks them, what they’re proudest of, what scares them. And then the cursor blinks, and none of it comes.
Section A is the one part of the EHCP written in your voice, not a professional’s. It holds your child’s views, interests and aspirations alongside yours as their parent or carer, and it comes from lived experience rather than from reports (SEND Regulations 2014, Regulation 12). That’s what makes it hard: you’re not filling in a form, you’re being asked to sum up a whole person in a few paragraphs. The free SEND Parents Help assistant can help you get it out of your head and into words, starting with a few questions rather than a blank page.
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.
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 promptThe 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. Swap your child’s full name for initials before you paste any of it into the assistant, and leave out the NHS number, home address, and date of birth if they’re in there; it works the same and you share less.
What makes a strong Section A
The SEND officer reading your plan 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 that should stay in your words, not the council’s, 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 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. If you’re still in the assessment stage, our guide to how to request an EHCP assessment explains what happens before a plan is written.
- Once your young person reaches the end of compulsory school age (the last Friday in June of Year 11, not their 16th birthday), they can contribute their own views directly.
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. When the draft plan arrives, our guide to checking a draft EHCP with AI helps you spot what to push back on.
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.