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Celebrating over 25 years of SEND support!

From a company of one, producing 12 SEND documents per month, to a 48-strong team providing specialist EHCP writing services and expert guidance and training to multiple stakeholders.

Join us as we look back and celebrate

the last 25 years!

1996 - 2009

Laying the groundwork

In 1996, Independent Business Services was established by Penny Dent as an at-home business setup to draft SEN Statements, with just one Local Authority customer initially. In 1998 recruitment started for SEN document writers, providing flexible working opportunities in the local community. This was followed a full-time employee to provide office support and, by 2003, Team Leaders had been introduced to train and manage increasing numbers of writers (one of whom was Corinna Bourke, our now Operations Director!). In 2009, the business moved to office premises.

2010 - 2015

Change all around

By 2010, our growing team had produced 40,000 SEN documents for one third of Local Authorities in England and our now Managing Director, Miriam Henson, had joined the office team full-time, after initially starting as a student writer. With the rise of scanning rather than photocopying and posting paperwork, in 2012 we pushed towards complete paperless working. During the last few months of 2013, the government opened up a new proposed SEN Code of Practice for consultation, along with the transition arrangements for the move from SEN Statements to Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs). We started working with Pathfinder authorities on EHCP drafting and were awarded our first contract in 2014 for completing statement-to-plan conversions. In 2015, Miriam and Corinna became the new owners of the business and changed the name to Enhance EHC Ltd.
2016 - Present

Growing and evolving

We were honoured in 2016 to be one of the finalists in the North Essex Business Awards, within the ‘Growing Business of the Year’ category. We also launched a new website and invested in our current secure systems. By 2017, we were producing approximately 1,200 SEND documents per month and had supported over half of the Local Authorities in England. We signed up to the Mind Workplace Wellbeing Index and the Time to Change Employer Commitment Pledge in 2017 and 2018 respectively, to ensure Enhance offered a positive working environment for its valued team.

By the beginning of 2019, we had launched our EHCP good practice resources for Local Authorities, schools and other SEND professionals. The same year also saw the launch of our online EHCP training system and Quality Assurance services and frameworks, and we continued to grow our CPD accredited courses throughout 2020.

Supporting the mental wellbeing of our team became an even more important pledge with the huge uncertainties that we all faced during 2020, so we were humbled when the results of an anonymous staff survey said that 100% of our staff would recommend us to others as a great place to work. In addition, as of 2023, over of a quarter of our team have been with us for over 10 years!

Now in our 27th year, we remain dedicated to supporting and collaborating with SEND professionals to help children and young people with SEND reach their potential, and are hugely excited about what the future may hold!

Finally, we would like to say a huge thank you to our wonderful team and all of our valued customers, both past and present, for enabling us to reach this amazing milestone!

Miriam & Corinna
(Managing Director & Operations Director)