First meeting with Ed Psych - any advice please

[marchduck]

DD is 3.8; she has speech and language delay and social communication & interaction difficulties and has started assessment for ASD. Paed also referred her to ed psych.
The EP has been in contact with me to say that she will be going out to observe DD in her pre-school setting shortly, and will then do a home visit to discuss her findings and talk about what DD needs for next year, when she will start primary. DH is keen that DD attends MS, I would like that too, but we are agreed that we will go with whatever is best for her.
I have read the SEN COP (hard-going!) and I would be very grateful for any advice on what I should ask the EP at the meeting.

Paed referred to EP? Lucky you, that doesn't happen in my area, health and education seem really adversarial. Will the EP be testing your DD as well as observing? Tests can sometimes show a wide variation in results (spiky profile) with relative highs in some areas and lows in others which can help support a DX of ASD. The EP's report should give results of the observations and any tests, explanations what the results mean and give advice to school/nursery in how best to support your DD. it may give you some advice for use at home.

Are you starting the process for statutory assessment for a statement?

Thank you for your reply EllenJane, that's a good question if we're starting the SA process. I had (probably naively) assumed that when the Paed referred DD to the EP that this was the start of the SA process, but come to think of it, the EP didn't mention this today. I was at work today when she phoned, and I work in an open-plan office , so it was a fairly quick call. The EP said that she would observe DD, and then do some 1-to-1 with her to look at her learning. She also said she would contact the SALTs DD has been under to get some feed-back.
So I think my first question will be to check that this is the start of the SA process!

going from my own experience, unless you have applied for a SA, this will not be part of it. EP will access your daughter, but not as thoroughly as she would have done if this was part of the SA.

When they visited us to observe DS1, they offered us a place on an ASD resource unit(pretty crap one at that) attached to a nursery and actively discouraged us to apply for a statement. so please do apply for a SA now before they waste any more time.

Thank you Dev, this is very helpful. Provision is quite limited where we live anyway, so I will apply for SA now. Hope your DS is doing well.

Marchduck

I assume Dev is speaking from her experiences but it isn't universally true to say that an EP will not access a child as thoroughly as they would if it were part of statutory assessment (in fact the opposite, as an EP if you are bounced into completing advice for a child you have never seen before you have very little time to do a proper assessment or consider your responses and advice, you have no opportunity to see their responses to interventions over time or complete any of the 'plan -do- review' cycles that the COP is based upon).

The EP visit will not be part of statutory assessment. That has to be requested by parent or setting, not pediatrician or EP. Why not call the EP back and ask about statutory assessment and what her plans are? Since she is just about to come and see you anyway?

Fair enough, I have to agree that I can only speak of my own experience and my experience can not be applied universally.

I should point out that I did have a private EP report done previously to the LEA EP's visit for comparison, so it wasn't just hearsay.

Thank you ilikemysleep and Dev; I'll contact the EP to see ask about SA.