There were 718,800 children and young people with an active Education, Health and Care Plan in England at January 2026, up 12.5% on the year before: the sharpest annual rise since EHC plans began in 2014. Needs assessments keep climbing, and mediation and tribunal requests climb with them. Staffing does not move at the same pace. For the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) teams doing the work, that gap is not an abstract pressure. It is the shape of every day.

That is the problem one children’s services SEND team set out to solve when it started using an AI tool to help draft Education, Health and Care Plans. Its experience shows how AI can support and free up caseworkers, not replace them, and what it takes to bring a sceptical team along with that change.

Why is demand outpacing the people who have to meet it?

Alex Waring is SEND Reform and Improvement Lead at the London Borough of Sutton, where the SEND team has been using Agilisys’s EHCP Agent to help draft Education, Health and Care Plans. Every needs assessment that becomes an EHCP creates an annual review the following year, and the year after that. Add rising mediation requests and tribunal preparation, and the workload compounds even where referral numbers hold steady. “Our numbers have been increasing, so we’ve been receiving high numbers of needs assessments,” Alex Waring says. “Every needs assessment that becomes an EHCP is an extra annual review each year, and we are receiving high numbers of mediation requests, tribunal requests.” As Alex Waring puts it, “demand was outstripping supply, essentially, so we have to look at working more efficiently, working in a more streamlined manner, working with more modern technology.”

That is the honest starting point for most SEND teams looking at AI: not a technology ambition, but a service under strain that needs a way to keep up.

What do caseworkers actually fear when AI turns up?

Introduce a new tool into a team already stretched thin, and the first reaction is rarely enthusiasm.

“One or two people were kind of, probably beyond cynical into kind of suspicious, I suppose, and sort of felt like, well, why do we need this? Is this going to replace us? Am I still going to be able to produce high quality work? Is this going to look bad on me? Is this going to impact my output and even in the bigger picture, my job security?”

— Alex Waring, SEND Reform and Improvement Lead

Those questions are not irrational. They are the questions any professional would ask when a new tool touches the quality of work their judgement is trusted to produce. Answering them with a slide deck does not work. Answering them by using the tool and checking the results against professional standards does.

How did caseworkers build confidence in the tool?

The team’s answer was to keep the caseworker firmly in charge of the output.

“The tool was there to support them and to help and to release capacity and was able to maintain quality and kind of ownership because it produces the first draft and then the workers are there to edit it and still have kind of control over it and quality assure as they go.”

— Alex Waring, SEND Reform and Improvement Lead

The skill the team protected was not typing speed. It was the judgement to know what a high-quality EHCP looks like, and to catch it if a draft falls short.

That is a deliberate design choice, not an accident of the tool. “What we want to make sure is that within the team there’s the skills to write and understand what a high-quality EHCP looks like manually, so that you can judge what the tool is creating,” Alex Waring says. Caseworkers still need to understand SEND, the process, and what a good outcome looks like. The tool removes the blank page. It does not remove the professional judgement that follows it.

What actually changed once the scepticism wore off?

“All members of the team are saying consistently that it is saving them time,” Alex Waring says. “They’re aware it’s not a miracle cure. You need to understand SEND, you need to understand the process, but you can produce a high quality draft much more quickly and much easier.”

“You can put the reports in, click to generate and then go and make yourself a cup of tea and when you come back, the first draft will be there and I think there was some cynicism as to whether that was just marketing speak but actually that pretty much is the case and it kind of does generate in a few minutes. Sometimes it’s in a matter of seconds for a simpler plan.”

— Alex Waring, SEND Reform and Improvement Lead

Caseworkers restructured their week around that speed: running plans through in the morning, attending meetings across the day, and editing at the end of it. Time that went into drafting from scratch is now available for the parts of the job drafting was crowding out: relationships with schools and with the families behind each plan.

That matters for a reason beyond convenience.

“Realistically, SEND teams and local authorities in general have a problem with kind of perception. They’re not necessarily always going to have hugely positive relationships with families, with schools or other agencies because of the stresses and strains of the system. So what we’d hope is that as capacity continues to be released that we can build on those relationships which will be self-sustaining.”

— Alex Waring, SEND Reform and Improvement Lead

Giving time back is the lever for changing that. It is not a side effect of it.

We build the EHCP Agent this team uses, so we will say plainly where we stand. 40+ councils have signed up to use it. It cuts EHCP drafting time by 75% on average and has returned 17,000+ hours to frontline teams so far. We build it with staff like Waring’s, not for them, and we build a local authority’s capability to run and own it, not a dependency on us to keep it running: with or without us, the team keeps going.

  • 40+
    councils signed up to use the EHCP Agent
  • 75%
    average drafting time saved per plan
  • 718,800
    children with an active EHCP in England, January 2026

Is this pressure specific to one team, or the whole sector?

The wider data says the second. Children’s social workers already spend close to 80% of their time on computers and paperwork rather than with the people they serve, according to the British Association of Social Workers. The Local Government Association’s 2025 review found 95% of local authorities are already using or exploring AI, though only 7% describe themselves as leaders using it at scale. Most local authorities are early in this journey. The team behind this case study is further along than most, and its experience of what actually earns staff trust is a useful map for the rest.

Key takeaways

  • SEND demand is rising faster than staffing can follow: 718,800 children had an active EHCP in England at January 2026, up 12.5% on the year before.
  • Scepticism that AI will replace staff is a normal, reasonable first reaction, not a barrier to plan around.
  • Keeping caseworkers in control of the first draft, editing and quality-assuring it, is what protects both trust and quality.
  • Time saved on drafting gets reinvested in relationships with schools and families, which is what actually shifts a SEND service’s reputation.
  • Most local authorities are still early in adopting AI; teams further along report consistent time savings once the tool is embedded.

Frequently asked questions

How does AI support SEND caseworkers’ judgement when drafting EHCPs?

AI produces a first draft; caseworkers stay in control, editing and quality-assuring it before it goes out. That keeps the judgement of staff who understand SEND and know what a high-quality plan looks like at the centre of every plan, while the tool takes on the part that used to take the most time.

How much time can AI actually save on EHCP drafting?

Teams using Agilisys’s EHCP Agent report drafting time cut by 75% on average, with a first draft often ready within minutes of submitting reports, sometimes seconds for simpler plans. The saved time is typically reinvested in meetings, school and family relationships, and editing quality rather than reducing headcount.

Why are SEND teams under so much pressure right now?

Referral numbers and needs assessments have risen sharply nationally: 718,800 children had an active EHCP in England at January 2026, up 12.5% year on year, the sharpest rise since EHC plans began in 2014. Staffing has not grown at the same rate, so existing teams face rising mediation, tribunal and annual review workloads.

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