education psychologist

[drwitch]

Anybody got any hints or advice about how to get a private consultation. Ds (11)really struggles at dealing with things he finds hard (even though he can do them really well when he calms down). - Gets either really angry or really teary and neither response is when he moves up to secondary school. Its making him happy and stopping him learning at the rate of his peers. Not looking for a formal diagnosis as such but more some help in teaching him to deal with these feelings

But how do you know they weren't breaking the law? Who told you so?

I note that you don't seem to criticise the psychiatric advice that you were given that was also ignored. To be honest, it doesn't necessarily surprise me that local authority EPs gave duff advice, but if had been in your situation I would have thought that all the more reason to get some decent advice from an independent EP.

Because I complained and the ruling was they weren't

I didn't even submitt the independent assessment to the school it was a joke! Only thing right was his name (yes date of birth was wrong) sent it back twice to be amended before decided to put it down to experience.

But who made that ruling? If it was the school governors, council or even the local government ombudsman, frankly I wouldn't rely on their knowledge of the law.

What independent assessment are you referring to? You said the EPs were LA employed, so presumably not independent.

He saw an independent EP in primary I only listed secondary

I agree with all Augusta's posts above.

IMO, the school would have to show that they are acting on the advice of a professional, equally qualified as the education psychologist, psychiatrist, specialist teacher, whoever; and that is why they are entitled to ignore the advice of the professional, engaged by the parents to provide a private report.

We sat in an educational tribunal over dd's statement. We had paid for reports from independent professionals, including a consultant psychiatrist and I had used those to rewrite the statement, our working document. The consultant psychiatrist had made a diagnosis. The head of the LA's choice of school disputed the consultant psychiatrist's diagnosis. The chair of the Tribunal was furious. He sarcastically asked the LA's solicitor if they were calling the consultant psychiatrist a liar? He went on to point out there was a report by another consultant, who had offered to prescribe a psychiatric drug for the disputed condition; and that consultants don't hand these things out like smarties!

We knew that the Tribunal were not likely to listen to a teacher's view as to whether dd had a psychiatric condition, over a consultant psychiatrist! I suspect a disability tribunal would take the same view.

I considered every penny we spent on independent reports to be money well spent, and I always rewrote dd's statement myself, using those reports.

mrz, as you haven't answered my question about who made the ruling on your complaint, should I take it I'm right in thinking it was a council official or similar?

Yes you're correct but Id have to give you his whole life story to cover everything and everyone. My concerns started before he went to nursery and continue.

I rather naively believed having a diagnosis would "make everything better" it didn't!

My point is that relying on the findings of a council officer as authority for very firm pronouncements on the legal responsibility of schools is clearly all sorts of wrong. If you've had any experience at all of local authorities' involvement in education, you must know that their knowledge and application of the law is wholly unreliable. To take just one example, an awful lot of councils are confidently telling parents at the moment that they have no duty to do a new assessment when they transfer children from statements to EHCPs, when that is blatantly untrue. It's particularly odd to assume they must have got the law right when they were dealing with a complaint about failure to make provision for SEN, given that councils have a vested interest in keeping the costs of SEN provision down.

We therefore come back to the fact that schools certainly do have a duty to pay attention to independent educational psychology reports and would be failing seriously in that duty if they decide to ignore them.

Ive had lots of experience both as a parent and as a professional

And at the end of the day they don't have to follow recommendations as long as they do meet the needs of the child.

Who makes the judgment that the school are meeting the needs of the child?

That would be the child and their parent.

Yes, it is correct that the duty is to meet the needs of the child. But how can they be sure that they are meeting that child's needs if they're ignoring advice? I've posted a reference upthread to one case where a school stoutly maintained that they were meeting all the child's needs and blatantly weren't, and frankly that's the tip of a very large iceberg.

I would certainly question whether a child is in a position to judge whether his needs are being met. If a parent gets an independent EP report which advises her that her child's needs aren't being met, in most cases they're not going to disagree - indeed, the very fact that they've commissioned the report tends to indicate that they're worried. If you believe that the parent's judgment as to whether their child's needs are being met is conclusive, it follows that you cannot be correct in saying "The fact is the school doesn't have to accept the recommendations in the report and they don't have to give a reason".

and if the advice is inappropriate?

Haven't RTFT but as an independent psychologist, I can vouch that what supplysam said is not 100% accurate. At all!

You will need to make sure the psychologist is HCPC registered. BPS charter is not essential. A good psychologist (independent or otherwise) will probably start with a consultation and should usually observe the child in school AND meet with teachers. It is not the most helpful/thorough work if they only meet you and your child. Individual assessment may or may not be necessary and should not be the whole extent of their work.

The idea that if a school don't refer to their Local Authority EP then the child is not in need, is massively outdated. Many schools are unable to refer children to their LA psych service unless in need of statutory support. Many EP services have been stripped right back due to budget cuts meaning children who could benefit from input are no longer able to be seen. Depends on your area of course.

Good luck.

If the advice is known to be inappropriate, fine, it shouldn't be followed. But the chances are significantly in favour of the proposition that a qualified and experienced EP is not going to give inappropriate advice. I'm not clear who you believe is to make the judgment that the advice is inappropriate - it appears from your earlier post that you consider that that is a matter for the parent; it follows that if a parent is asking the school to follow the advice, they should do so.

So which of the two Educational Psychologists reports on my desk should I follow? Some recommendations are against the advice of the SaLT report also on my desk and contrary to the "dyslexia" specialist's views ...any suggestions?

No I said the child and parent are best placed to decide if the school is meeting the child's needs.

for example some private assessors still use dyslexia as a diagnosis-For a reason, because it is. DSM5, Patoss, BDA and even the Rose review 2009 all still regard it as a diagnosis which is a combination of biological and environmental risk factors. Law also regards it in this way, classifying it as a disability which protects people with dyslexia from being victims of discrimination.

Flanks, "dyslexia" is a catch all umbrella term with little actual definition and meaning.

Parents role up with a "dyslexia" diagnosis from a private ed psych, ( often coupled with "gifted" - equally catch all and meaningless and demand all sorts of things from us.

"Dyslexia" can mean pupil is entirely independent and requires no additional input what so ever, or has severe and multiple specific learning difficulties.

A "diagnosis" of "dyslexia" in an educational setting is unhelpful and uninformative. If I refer a pupil to the school ed psych, I get back a detailed break down of strengths and weaknesses, including recommendations on which weaknesses to address most urgently.

Whether or not the student could be classed as "dyslexic" is neither here nor there.

Flanks, Im not going to quote from what you have said about keyboards, and word processing, it is too long.

However, without question, over-use of keyboards inhibits not only handwriting development, but processing and organisational development too.

This is another common issue with private ed psych reports, the recommendation that keyboards are made available.

It is all a matter of balance, There are very few children that benefit from full time use of keyboards, for example, children without hands.

However, for the vast majority, especially for children with splds, this is educationally undesirable, and hampers development significantly, worsening many SEN considerably, rather than helping.

On the other hand, all children should be using a keyboard regularly anyway, although for many children with SEN, the current thinking is they should be using it less than other children, rather than more.

Yet parents turn up in schools brandishing ed pysch reports demanding access to keyboards all the time. There is often no point in trying to discuss, or argue, or show evidence, or anything like that. We just ignore the report, as we are entitled to do, it being private.

I do read MOST private ed psych reports that land on my desk, not all. There is often simply too many. I don't have the luxury of time to read every single one, and many of those I do read I just skim through.

I probably ignore totally around half of the ones I read. Some of them are really very silly!

I maybe find something useful in around half, but even then, there is the question of time, resources and simply trying to memorise what has been said.... walking round a class of 30, I really couldn't quote you page after page verbatim of each child's records....

So some get partly acted on, if I have tine to read it, if it has anything meaningful in it, if I have resources to act on it, and if I remember. It really isn't ever going to be a high priority, there are thousands of other variables that need to be remembered and acted on in the average lesson, wee don't walk round with written instructions, you know. Might have a planner to refer to on the desk, with nothing more than half a line for each child.

Hi Zoe

I will respond to the two points about keyboards and dyslexia.

Keyboards
I do not know how you have come across such a strong position on typing being cognitively harmful, the evidence in the literature is not at all conclusive.

I don't doubt that many reports over-use it as a recommendation.

However, when correctly recommended, it will be essential. Handwriting is a very complicated coordination task, cognitively speaking, and if the student is inhibited in their processing of this task then insisting they carry it out is essentially cruel.

For many students the act of handwriting is so attention demanding it acts as an inhibitor for creativity, planning, sequencing and vocabulary. In short: they write very little, and very little of any use. For most people handwriting (once learned) is an automated process, which demands very little-to-no attention, which allows them to focus their attention on the other areas of handwriting listed above. Therefore, if a person is unable to enact anything, because their handwriting coordination/processing is so inhibited, then a word processor is unquestionable of more benefit than forcing them to hand write. Why? Because it allows them to focus attention on the other skills, which are actually essential.

An argument that handwriting is of value because it develops these cognitive functions is not valid when the task of handwriting itself inhibits them from developing those functions.

Dyslexia

Flanks, "dyslexia" is a catch all umbrella term with little actual definition and meaning.

No.

I know that many people use it as such, but no.

I suspect (from your comment) that you have been heavily influenced by the word of Dr Julian Elliott, or tabloid reporting of his work.

Dyslexia at it's core is quite well defined, the variability of definition comes from what behaviours are included in the definition.

Dyslexia is an unexpected failure to acquire literacy, even though there has been adequate teaching, socio-economic factors and ability to do so.

The reason gifted appears so often, is because one of the simplest ways to recognise dyslexia is for there to be a discrepancy between a person's IQ and their literacy skills. IQ testing has more evidence as a predictor of academic achievement than any other single test or assessment, although it is certainly not infallible, and so this discrepancy (with associated behaviours) is the easiest way to recognise dyslexia.

So when you say:
"Dyslexia" can mean pupil is entirely independent and requires no additional input what so ever" you are wrong. They need additional input to achieve their potential. If an extremely bright pupil achieves within the average range because a school fails to meet their needs then they have been disadvantaged as much as the less able student that achieves below the average range. This is the fundamental definition of inclusion (also enshrined in law by the way).

However, an intelligence/literacy discrepancy is not the only way to recognise it. It has been estimated that 80% of all people with dyslexia have a fundamental phonological deficit which prevents them from fluently learning and recognising letter/sound correspondence. Working memory is being researched more heavily and this is supporting research in to phonological processing.

There are two problems here:

1. That dyslexia is misrepresented (by all parties) in the public domain. Elliott gets this correct, the general public quite often mistakenly believe that Dyslexia is very clearly defined, that a single test is carried out to diagnose it and it is used as a 'catch all' in general conversation to describe learning difficulties.

2. People have attacked dyslexia (in much the way you have) erroneously, by representing dyslexia as the general perception, rather than the history and research which supports it. It is easy to attack a straw man.

However, there is overwhelming evidence that there are groups of people which are unable to acquire literacy skills for no evidence reason. Elliott himself agrees with this and is explicit on the fact.

Research often moves boundaries for diagnosis, and as all neurodevelopmental research progresses it is inevitable that our understanding of all cognitive learning and functions will change. This does not mean that dyslexia is undefined any more than it means heart disease is undefined just because we learn something new about how to recognise it in 10years time.

The fact is there is no universally accepted definition of dyslexia (or even its existence ) but there is a huge industry around it.

For handwriting v keyboards suggest read Cunningham & Stanovich , James and Englehardt and Naka as a startingpoint