Difference between severe and profound

[MooMummyMoo]

My daughter has her annual statement review coming up (first one) and so various professionals are currently writing and submitting their reports. In a conversation with my DDs pre school today they mentioned they'd sat with the ed psychologist and part of this was to record what her primary need level was. The ed psy said she thought my dd was borderline profound/severe and so to urr on the side of caution and put her down as profound. I had always thought she was severe so am surprised but now realise I haven't a clue what the distinction would be. Does anyone have this? How do they decide between one level and the next?? And I suppose most importantly, does it matter? Will it impact anything?

Can anyone offer any insight?!

Thanks x

Sorry to be depressing but if it regards learning difficulties they are severe if the person has the approximate ability of a six year old and profound if they have the abilities of an eighteen month old hope that helps in any way

It does thank you. That sounds about right I guess, although I suppose it would also be influenced by how old they are? She isn't quite 4 yet.

If I'm completely honest I almost feel a bit miffed about it all. Like she has been 'down graded'... Like now we can only aspire to severe learning difficulties! Ridiculous I know...

I got the impression it was a bit of a finger in the air job rather than according to specific criteria but there must be something they follow? Or you'd hope so?!

There are educational levels that are deemed appropriate for each age group, but I have no idea how they are used or at what age. At ds review (now 14) he was compared against a graph with P scales/NC levels for his school (an MLD but ds has SLD) to demonstrate his progress against expected norms.

I work in a special school and we have children with severe and profound learning difficulties. I personally treat every child as an individual no matter what their 'official' diagnosis is. However in a school setting funding is often based on the 'official' diagnosis and I find parents see that their children will benefit if they are considered to have profound learning difficulties with more resources put in place to support them. This will also help with benefits etc. When filling out forms I explain to parents that I put 'worse case scenarios' on them so that they receive the most help they can get.

Strictly speaking the definitions are based on IQ levels ('average' being 100, 'mild' being 70-85, 'moderate' being 55-70, 'severe' being 40-55, 'profound' being 25-40).

It's quite unusual to have a child described as having 'profound learning difficulties' on their own. Generally speaking, children would have 'Profound and mulitple learning difficulties' and such children would be entirely dependent on adults for all, or almost all, of their needs, e.g. positioning, eating and drinking, communication, mobility, etc.

A child with severe learning difficulties is expected to stay on P levels (ie. less than that achieved by mainstream children in Year 1, 5-6 year olds) for most of their school life.

The thing to bear in mind is that most of our children have 'splinter skills' and 'spiky profiles'. For instance, DD1 is completely able to engage with an adult and get them to do what she wants, despite having quite significant interaction difficulties!!

In S&L terms it's the same in terms of diagnostics, I think. The severity is based on how many standard deviations from the 'norm' a child scores on a scaled test.

DD1 was 'severe' at the age of 4. I don't actually know now what she is, but it doesn't matter because it's obvious that her difficulties span most of daily living activities.