To ask if you have had an experience with an educational psychologist, was it helpful?

[Daisymccleod]

I'm a newly qualified educational psychologist. Just wondered what people thought?

Kewcumber- great to hear of ep therapeutic input was helpful. Did the ep give you material to do with your dc at home following closure of the intervention? Would you have needed that/ found it helpful if so?

We have a step plan devised with DS during his therapy which had to be heavily moderated by me - DS is definitely in denial about his issues (and very aware of them) so for example we ended up with step two being for him to get used to beetles because he's scared of them. Fair enough - but when he says "beetle" he means "cockroach and he isn't at a level 4 "feeling scared when you see a beetle" he is at 10 "running away screaming in fear for your life if you think you might have seen one"! Full on phobia! (along with all his others).

He has several phobias which are all on his step plan and I do think it is pretty much unachievable within a reasonable time frame.

To be fair EP was very good at consulting me by email (with DS's consent).

The biggest thing we got out of it was the thought balancing and gave me some insight into his thinking.

Also helpful was the EP's explanation to he teacher about why DS responds so badly to time out. What was unhelpful was that they won;t put an alternative behaviour management plan in place because he isn;t able to engage with it (due to his executive processing being so poor he has very little emotion control when he's anxious). Even without his ability to engage I would like to have seen a dictate to the school that time out should not be used and XYZ (lines, time off break etc) be used instead.

EP was lovely and definitely got the best out of DS despite the fact that he found it very very hard to engage with some of his issues and was a master in distraction techniques - I attended one session and itched to tell him to pay attention!

To be fiar to our school they aren't really looking for a statement (unless it's appropriate) neither am I - we both want him to do as well as he can and his issues are outside the scope of most teachers experience (he was insitutionalised at birth for a year in another country).

EP did some great work looking for evidence based studies on executive processing in institutionalsied children

I would have liked more input into the management of children with poor /non-existant executive processing, how you help them develop them. Even it just points me in the direction of further reading/courses.

On the whole meh.

Nice chatty people but gave strategies to the school which were not appropriate. I told them they wouldn't work. They didn't work and yet every single new report has the same strategies.

I also didn't appreciate the ed psych having a mini meeting with the school ahead of a review meeting where they miraculously turned up with a new report to discuss at the meeting which I was given as they sat down. Poor show really.

So far not really. DD waiting for ASD/ADD assessment. She's currently in year 2. Mostly lovely and kind but rather dreamy at home, screaming melt downs and defiance at school (probable sensory processing issues).

Had a meeting with teacher/SENCO/EP (not DD though). He observed her then wrote a report stating the obvious. e.g. DD works well unsupervised at a desk but can't cope with being surrounded by children on the carpet, proposed solution: sit her at the edge of the carpet away from other children. Well durrr. A brief report along those lines with about 3 totally obvious suggestions.

I'm guessing he had very little time allocated per child and this was the best he could do and his presence ticked a box. I'm assuming there will be more EP input at some stage which will hopefully be a bit more in depth.

good luck with your new career by the way.

Kewcumber- I'll have a think over the next day or so and pm yoy with some ideas, if that's ok?
Soap box- poor show indeed. Have you addressed these concerns with the ep?
The scone- was an ep review part of the recommendations? If so it sounds like it could have been an initial piece of work which states the obvious but formally records it with a view to more work to come?

And thank you scone- I'm feeling a bit more excited now

Thanks absolutely fine - will pm you with the issues in as non-identifying a way as I can...

Congratulations on qualifying! My experience with educational psychologists has been a bit mixed.

The first was very helpful but was only involved briefly.

The second was rather tactless about my son and dismissed some of my concerns without any reason (and it turned out she was wrong to do so). I came away from every meeting feeling enraged until the day I finally snapped and had a long rant about how frustrated I felt about the situation. I later discovered that my son's teachers weren't too impressed with her either.

He's at a new school now, so at some point I expect to meet a third. I'm sure most educational psychologists do an excellent job, so I'm fairly hopeful...

Congratulations on qualifying. We used an independent Ed Psych to assess DS who has ASD, ADHD and dyslexia. He was very thorough, carried out a whole set of standardised tests, and was extremely patient and flexible with DS. Wrote a massively detailed report making specific recommendations. He visited the school that we wanted to name on our statement, came as a witness to our tribunal when the LA refused to name it (independent school specialising in ASD), and helped us win our appeal. DS is thriving now thanks to the input the school has made.

Our LA Ed Psych was not so helpful, and tried to block the dyslexia diagnosis and wrote a very wishy washy report for his statement.

Both. I saw a lovely one when DS was in nursery but when it came to the one DS saw when he was 6 and applying for his statement, it was the complete opposite.

He basically told me that a statement wouldn't help my son as 1:1 help wouldn't bring him on any further or faster. Apparently he was working at half his age and would always do that. He said that once he got to the age of 16, he wouldn't progress any further and would have the academic skills of a 12 year old.

The upshot of the meeting is that he thought there was no way my DS would ever amount to anything. I left that meeting sobbing.

The guy has since left and my DS has had his statement for the last year. I can't believe the difference in him. He isn't the child on the lowest level book in his class.

I'm sure you will be great. Just remember that the little person in front of you isn't just a number, he/she is someone's world.

Yes and no.

Daisy that was the 3rd ed psych. We are on to the 4th or 5th now. Not including random supervisors. All within 18 months.

I did.
But she had banked my cheque by then!
We decided to look into ways to help Ds Ourselves and I am pleased to say he is doing very well. He turned 12 on Saturday so is one of the youngest in his year 7 group but is getting some level 6s for his work which is great.
He was functionally illiterate in year 3.

Tip....
Don't say to the child's mother
"Well you may need to accept that the bottom sets are where * belongs"
My sons year 3 (nqt) teacher said that to me.
I should thank her really....she spurred me into helping him achieve his potential.
Silly me...I thought it was the schools job.....

...I may have mentioned to said teacher that Ds got level 5 for reading in his year 6 sats.
Hehe.
Bitch.

So sorry to hear that baddz but yay your Ds is doing so well

I'm not an EP- but I was googling executive function problems and came across this leaflet with lots of games/suggestions to help: developingchild.harvard.edu/index.php/download_file/-/view/1710/

And on the subject of EPs, I met one (who we had called in for advice on a child's uncooperative behaviour, possible PDA or ODD) who, when the child refused to cooperate with her assessments, said 'oh dear, he doesn't seem to be in a very cooperative mood, shall I come back another day?'.

I remember my brother going to see one as a kid and her also asking me and mum questions, and recall her ears pricking up at certain responses etc... Sure she meant well and was all correct procedure or what have you but do remember strong feeling of being scrutinised and judged that lingered long after we'd left. Quite a few years back, early 90s. Congrats on qualifying OP x

Congrats on qualifying OP.

We use the LEA EPs. I'm not really impressed. I get wishy washy reports that are based on an interview with the parent and are basically notes from the meeting. I could do that myself. Have to push and push and push to get any cognitive assessment or even a thorough assessment (including an observation).

Waste of money. However, I am thinking about becoming one but not if I'm going to end up that impotent.

Not had any experience of an EP yet, but expect to see one in the Autumn when we start down the EHC plan route for DD who'll be going to school in Sept 2016. To be fair I've no idea what they'll be doing.

The EP my ds saw was initially great at helping us getting him diagnosed despite school refusing to see a problem (we self-referred via the emergency line, as he was basically having a breakdown at 7 years old).

Then when the same EP ended up being allocated EP for his Statutory Assessment it all changed. Wording was deliberately vague, there was backtracking on things they had told us about ds and his needs whilst going through diagnosis and everything basically towed the LA line to the detriment of ds.

Later, when the school failed to implement the statement once it was finalised, they sat on the fence and refused to get involved, despite the majority of his statement being written on the back of their report. In fact they went so far as to say the exact opposite about one particular area of support that they had when speaking to us previously and talking us through the statement provision.

Finally, when ds hit a wall with secondary transition, CAMHS refused to see him as the problem was school based only, Paed said it wasn't his territory either and as a school related issue the EP should be supporting - he then contacted the EP, who still had ds's case file open at this point, only to be told he'd had all the support they were willing/able to give and they were now closing his file. Leaving us with nowhere left to turn.

As far as I can tell they were left with little choice but to protect their own position/job, as there have been high profile cases within our LA of EPs being sacked for standing up for what's right, rather than towing the party line. I do understand this, it's all very well being noble and standing up for what's right, but if it leaves your family with no income then it's not really a choice many people can make.

I would echo another poster and don't be fooled by someone masking comprehension difficulties, especially girls with average verbal comp on assessment who have been referred to you for concerns. I am a Speech and Language Therapist working in a specialist language base and it can get very frustrating when EPs report that language is fine on the basis of doing a cognitive assessment and watching a child for twenty minutes in a class when a full standardised language assessment has been done that shows that it's anything but. This hasn't happened me in a long while but was a hallmark of my early career. Also, if doing CBT with kids with uneven language profiles, it is really helpful to visually mediate it (eg draw out your interaction in vivo) and do a lot of monitoring they understand you AND that you understand them.

Thank you Chronically thats very kind of you - unfortunately that article does what most of them do - focus on what you can do to improve working memory and what I would consider to be the more mechanical side of executive processing. DS's bigger issues revolve around emotion and frustration control, self regulation etc the emotional/behavioral side of things. He scored about as high as it's possible to and still be on the piece of paper (I think 95 on one where the range is 0-100 and the "normal range is 0-50)

His planning and working memory is also impacted by his lack of self esteem - he scored in the normal range on tests when he was confident and below the normal range when he wasn't.

Its possible that his planning skills are better becuase he's very involved with several organsied sports or that his early life trauma only affected one specific part of his brain (though I don;t think it's that straighforward!)