SEND Local Offer information pages

Hierarchy is the order and relationship of one page to another.

You'll have seen breadcrumb trails, just like Hansel and Gretel, we don't want people to get lost.

Home > Education > EHC plans > Apply for an EHC plan

Let's look at how you might create this hierarchy for the education, health, and care plans information.

A hierarchy for education, health, and care plans

EHC plans sit in the education section of the SEND Local Offer. You then decide how to break down the information you need to share.

You can create whatever structure you like. As an example, we've got an EHCP info page, with introductions to

• What is an EHCP
• Process timeline
• Support services
• Rights and appeals
• Forms and leaflets

Each of those pages link to lower levels, always showing the most important information first. There are different styles of pages you can use in the pop pop SEND Local Offer.

Creating site maps with Octopus.do

We usually use octopus.do (opens in a new tab) to plan a new site. It's a nice way to think about the structure of your content, and you can start planning immediately.

You can see our EHC plan structure (opens in a new tab) and then make your own copy to think about how you'd make these pages.

These are for introductions or general information. They're simple web pages, where you can add your written content with

• Headings
• Paragraphs
• Lists
• Images
• Any content you choose

You can learn more about writing accessible content in our free Readability and the SEND Local Offer course.

With the pop pop SEND Local Offer, you can create guide pages. These give a permanent sub-menu or navigation block.

They're used to show related information, all of which might be useful to a parent carer at some time.

It's a great way for people to find information they don't know exists, or haven't thought of.

Where a process is linear, and people have to do things in a particular order, we can use step by steps.

Many EHC plan teams have created lovely PDFs with roads or other graphics to show this process. But as you know, PDFs aren't accessible to everyone. They're also difficult to update.

With a step by step page, people who use screen readers can access the information, and you can update it whenever you need.