Which professional(s) should we see?

[beautifulgirls]

Long story but about to apply for statement for DD with full support of school (hoorah!) - however Ed Psych we spoke to today is unlikely to be supportive of a statement (Had a TAC meeting today, hence met EP).
Going to get the GP to refer for further assessment maybe at the Nuffield Hospital as previous community paed was useless and said nothing wrong on previous 2 visits. Personal feeling is DD is likely dyspraxic but maybe also aspergers? Any experiences of the Nuffield Hospital for this sort of situation and will they deal with both concerns or just the dyspraxia concern? Who else do we need to see - would a private Ed Psych be a good idea to support a statement application if the other Ed Psych is working for the LEA to their agenda? Where can I find someone privately if so?
She is under OT for motor skills without formal diagnosis, and also on books of non existant speech therapy service and sees private SALT. Any other suggestions very welcome.

Call the helplines - SOS!SEN or IPSEA who may be able to suggest. Depending on finances, some would suggest a private ED Psych. Private Ed Psych may also be able to give more detailed report, do more observation, etc. If finances are available, you could perhaps get more detailed reports from SALT and OT, if you think is necessary. The amount of detail that you get from the LA reports and the private ones are quite surprising. Where are you?

We are based in North Kent, but access into London is not a problem. Happy to spend out for private assessments at this point so if anyone has any recommendations for Ed Psych privately I would be grateful

Thanks keepymsox - sorry for not getting back sooner, life kind of overtook me today!

anyone have any recommendations? please...

Dyspraxic as in body wise or you mean verbally ?

I know nothing about ED's or the Nuffield - sorry - would love to see one for DS as he has AS/dyspraxia, but I am just wondering whether it would help your case to get the OT to officially diagnose dyspraxia or DCD. (Our OT say dyspraxia is a symptom not a condition apprarently so his offical dx is DCD). It would be within her remit to give a dx and it sounds as though it would be useful to have formal confirmation of a condition.

As for finding an ED, have you looked on the British Psychological Society website(www.bps.org.uk)? You should find one there although without recommendations so you have to take your chances.

If you do get the opportunity to get referred by the GP ask to see a clinical psych rather an a paed - they can dx AS, paeds can't, well not round here anyway. Your case has to be strengthened by a proper dx surely?

Good luck.

RoundTB4 - We suspect verbal and full body dyspraxia from previous assessments, but no-one has so far actually given us a diagnosis.

Thanks Niecie, will look into the clinical psych option. Our OT refused to confirm or rule out this being dyspraxia and said it was not her place to diagnose. Sadly the paed we had seen originally signed us off saying everything was fine and more or less only referred to OT because I pushed her to do it - at the same time as signing her off! Despite her getting dreadful results on the assessment with the OT and at follow up we have not been back to the paed - didn't see the point when she was denying anything was wrong. Hence now we need to arrange to see other professionals and hopefully get a different paed involved too.

hi how is her speech and do you have salt involved.Not sure know the nuffield will deal with verbal dyspraxia but not at the severe end they turned ds down

If your worried about speech ican is very good and they do ep report to as well as salt but not really the physical side so much

Her speech is defined as moderate by the local NHS SALT "service"(!!) at the moment so hopefully she would still be seen by Nuffield. I really am at the stage that I just want to know what we are dealing with now in terms of ruling in or out certain diagnoses. For so long DH and I have been saying we just can't put our finger on what is going on with her. I would be so surprised if she didn't get an official dyspraxia diagnosis but to us there is something else going on in her head - at times we see issues and despair, other times she seems just fine and we can feel quite confident for her future. As she grows up it seems to be getting more obvious that her emotional and social behaviour can be very different to her peers - hence the ?about whether she may also have aspergers. She is only just 6 so still quite young I think for this to be necessarily that apparent, especially in a girl from what I read.

I spoke to our private SALT yesterday and she seemed to think if we could get seen at Nuffield that they would look at all factors with her for us, so will see how we get on with getting a referral and what they have to say. Will still look into ed psych as well though I think.

Thanks

SOS!SEN is London based and has a list of ed psych, OTs and speech therapists whose reports have been used to support statements. I would give them a call. I have to say I was surprised at how much more information private assessments will give - nhs staff are discouraged from recommending no of hours of therapy.

Our school ed psych is not very useful and her reports from meetings seem to read like the minutes of one. Also, she very much takes the local authority line. I saw examples of good private assessments and am now trying to get some done. Wished I had ds privately assessed earlier.

In a tribunal situation, the local authority will have to explain why they think their ed. psych report is more valid than yours.

Thank you - will look into that. Have met the school Ed Psych at the TAC meeting and her attempted line was that DD would benefit from being seen but really she was going to find it hard to fit her in! Thankfully SENCO at the school just got her diary out and said that's fine, we'll wait, when can you say you will be free!! However am anticipating her cancelling if she can find an excuse to do so. Since the statement assessment request not yet gone in she probably still doesn't feel obligated to see her, but hopefully that will change. Meanwhile we have time to get private assessment done.