Ed Psych

[pootlepootle]

hi

My daughter has been to see an OT about a potential diagnosis of dysgraphia.

They've suggested that she sees an Ed Psych.

My Dd is at a private school who have found an ed pysch to come to school for the best part of an afternoon to talk to school and us and then give us his findings and allow us to ask questions. For this, the fee would be £628.

I went to see our (lovely) gp to see whether we could go the Nhs route. She doesn't know but is going to find out.

Does anyone here know? £628 is hard for us to find on top of everything else that January brings.

If the Nhs route exists for kids at prep school is there any reason why the £628 method is significantly better than the Nhs?

Many thanks for any help

Ed Pyschs are not employed by the NHS.

In many areas Ed Pyschs are employed directly by your local council or are a private service that the LA 'buy-in' as necessary.

Their work is usually directed by the coucil Education Service and many LAs will say that because your child is in private school they cannot be seen by the coucil employed Ed Pyschs.

However, I have heard that some parents whose children are in the independant sector argue successfully with their council that as council tax payers they should be permitted access to council employed Ed Pyschs,

It's well worth a try. The first stop would be to contact the Ed Pysch Service directly and ask for an assessment. If refused you can then complain to your Local Councillor or raise a formal complaint via the council's complaints procedure.

If you go down the private route (I've done both) you will get a far more comprehensive assessment that you would get from an Ed Pysch employed by the Council.

For the sort of money you've described I would expect the Ed Pysch to spend about 3 hours with your child, observing and conducting formal diagnostic tests and - very importantly - giving you a written report at the end of the process.

Ed psychs work for the local authority. A private assessment in our area would be around £300, so nowhere near what the school has quoted (though London area would obv be considerably more). You have a few other routes you can take. Am wondering why something so specific as dysgraphia - it is very unusual to have a child referred to EP with such a specific pre-diagnostic opinion. How old is she?

As WA says, you expect a written report from EP containing their assessments and tests, with the results and recommendations (and settle for nothing less)

Am currently at the end of my psychology bit of the entry requirements so I can start EP training in Sept, fingers crossed, so am very interested in what happens here.

ed psychs through state schools are hard to come by and assessments are usually reserved for those very much in need (probably only one or two kids a year will be assessed from each school), so many parents whose children do not meet the severe criteria end up paying private ed psych for assessment anyway. £628 sounds about right to me - we paid £650 about 3 years ago as we needed an ed psych report but dd did not meet the needs criteria through school.

what did the ot say? if her problem is poor handwriting then the ot would be the right place, but presumably the ot thinks the issues are deeper than just handwriting?

i suspect strongly that if you don't fork out the money, the next step will be discussions with the school about whether they are able to keep her there...

are her problems very severe? or is it more that the school is particularly academic and she is struggling to keep up? an ed psych would be able to give more of an overall picture, but i'm betting that in the timescale suggested they would just do basic wechsler and/or wiat stuff, which would give you an overall picture, but might not be targeted enough for what school are suggesting? is there a suggestion that it might be an ongoing thing, or that you might be required to sign up for ongoing financial support in terms of ongoing therapies etc?

has the ot provided a report? what did it say?

i suspect you are going to end up paying anyway, whether you go through school or find an indie ed psych of your own. are her issues marked enough to warrant an assessment through a state school if she was there? if not, even moving her wouldn't necessarily provide the support, so it might be worth gritting your teeth asap and seeing what the ed psych thinks...

agree with mrss - the pre-dx is quite specific and unusual... the referral to ot suggests this was initially a handwriting/ low tone/ dyspraxia query, which somehow has turned into potentially a more over-arching concern. who used the term dysgraphia? school? ot?

Ooh lots of questions.

School very much wants to keep her, at no point have they been trying to suggest that the contents of the report would / wouldn't create a suggestion that they'd like her to leave.

We're in a rural area so kids are reasonably hard to come by and definitely no waiting lists. it's not an educational hot house.

She's 9, just. has a reading age of 13 / 14. can talk very well and expresses herself very clearly.

The OT and the school both recommended Ed Psych to rule out that she doesn't have something more over-arching than simply just a problem with her writing.

Despite private handwriting tutor, on top of private school she still has the writing of a Reception aged child.

The OT asked her to write out "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog". when writing this out as many times as she could in 3 minutes the speed was actually very good but included errors such as the use of lower and upper case in the wrong places, poor inter word spacing, incorrect use of ascenders and descenders, sequencing difficulties and missing letters within a word.

The reason that the OT recommended the Ed Psych opinion is sought to assess whether there are differences between her verbal and non verbal reasoning that may be contributing to her recording difficulties. I suspect that it was also recommended because I told the OT how worried we are about dc and i think she thought that this might help to see whether there's anything else. even if it just allays our fears.

When she's writing, she can't spell. when she's typing she can. she's very good at memorising her spellings but struggles to spell in actual written work. she has an extremely good memory and certainly remembers events or occasions extremely clearly.

we are struggling with problems with her self esteem and anxiety. She looks at other girls in her class and wants to have the handwriting of child A, the sportiness of child b, the mathematics ability of child C. So wants to be the milliondollar child! It's horrible to see as i'd love her to like herself. no matter how many times we tell her, she honestly believes that everything is all her own fault and we can dissuade her of this opinion.

The OT did a test called the Beery Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual Motor Integration. When she did this test with the OT she didn't suspect any significant difficulties but once she'd scored it, her performance was outside of the normal range for her age.

She reported no concern about sensory processing and muscle tone appears totally normal. she's good at throwing and catching. however she can't skip and can't tie her shoelaces. small buttons are difficult for her and the (in my eyes over the top) pe kit can create some issues. She's slow at getting dressed for PE. This was never cited as an issue in her state junior school but the clothing was less onerous.

A trip to the Ed. Psych wasn't unheard of at her state junior school and i would imagine that they'd have suggested it by now if she'd still been there.

i hope i've answered everything.

thanks for replying.

ah ok. that makes it easier to work out how you've got to where you are.

the vmi is probably a bit useless in isolation. as you've got a reasonably good grip on her academic ability, has she already had the wechsler iv or wiat done? if not, is that what the ed psych will do this time?

it will be interesting to see what the results are (i'm guessing her weakness will be processing speed etc) but tbh i suspect you are going to be left paying for either ongoing slt or ot. and i'd guess at ot, as i'm also predicting her verbal reasoning etc isn't going to be an issue. but that's all a guess, obv.

re private handwriting tutor - was that recommended through school? as she has other obvious fine motor difficulties, was he/ she merely working on hadnwriting, or making an attempt to work on all of her fine motor issues?

some kids who are above average in certain areas do have problems with perfectionism, so that isn't unusual. have you read any dweck? ds's teacher is an enormous fan.

in any of our state schools, i don't think she'd have been seen by the ed psych, but you are obv in a very different demographic. you are obv concerned and i think you would be happier if you get the wechsler stuff done if she hasn't had it done. it might not get you very far with the dysgraphia side, but they are always interesting to ponder, especially differences between kids, and wondering which bit contributes to behaviours and abilities.

i assume you've already googled the vmi test and her specific results to get an idea of what might be suggested?

i've tried to google the vmi test and to be honest (and i'd like to think i'm not thick) none of it made a great deal of sense. i have her specific results and would be grateful if you could point me in the direction of a site etc that is suitable for a lay person.

Parts of that Weschler test i could imagine she'd be very very good at and others she probably wouldn't. has a tendency to panic in maths if under a tight timescale. both my kids do. they can't stop thinking of the seconds passing to multiply two numbers together! :)

it looks like i'm going to have to start saving!

thanks for your help. it's very much appreciated.

it would also be interesting to look into a broader area - dyspraxia or dyslexia - having an amazing reading age is not as unusual as you might think, particularly for children with scotopic sensitivity or similar, visual processing issue rather than fine motor.
Lots of info around on neuromotor issues, and an utter minefield to diagnose. IMHO if you feel it is a significant worry and has been present for most of her life, rather than appearing or manifesting recently, it may be worth looking into child psych (which is available on NHS, albeit with hideously long waiting lists) rather than EP who tbh can't really refer you on anywhere - as the system stands atm. Depends really whether it's developmental or not, and only a proper expert can tell you that

Ds was seen and had full psycho/Ed assessments by child psych... Would agree, much more thorough than tests in isolation with Ed psych.

But good place to start if waiting lists are putting you off!

Well, dc is getting irritated with all this. Not happy with number of trips to see teachers at school, the amount of interest being taken in her handwriting, trips to the GP, the OT and all the other things I'm doing / reading / trying to understand.

She said to me that she gets the feeling I'm enjoying her finding handwriting difficulties.

At the age of 8, that's a big concept - that people would enjoy the drama of there being something she needs help with. i also run the risk that she'll go underground with it as she's very clever at her avoidance techniques of hiding issues.

Her eldest sister is doing very well at school and the little one is really struggling with jealousy. The thing is that honestly the little one is more intelligent than the eldest one, but dc2 is up and down in mood and feelings and dc1 is more placid and straightforward.

God this is hard.

It is hard, I agree!! I actually wish they'd clone themselves to give us a fair shot at parenting, instead of siblings always being so bloody different!
The knack for us has been to ensure that there is a balance - which in our case is quite difficult at times, so that the attention demanded by a difficulty (in my ds1's case, hugely dyslexic) is also balanced - and preferably outweighed by the attention he gets for something he is good at. For years this needed us to make mountains out of molehills be a bit creative about finding the achievements It's the only way we keep him on the rails - otherwise it does become all about the difficulty or disability, for all the right reasons but it doesn't feel like it to them. My own experience was much the same, I had a speech impairment and as a kid all the attention was in danger of being focussed on something I was crap at. Talking. So I got good at swimming instead and made the national comps