How useful are ed psych reports?

[Hallybear79]

I know its a strange question but after being on the long journey of getting answers/ diagnosis & coming across both excellent & totally incompetant professionals its been a case of 2 steps forward, 3 steps back. My DS has recently been told he was dyspraxic by paediatrician who along his OT have been brilliant & very supportive & pro active. He's also under CAMHS for suspected ASD who in a nutshell have been utter s**t. We waited 6 months to see them. We had 1 appointment with a women who didn't observe my DS just asked questions that were answered 6 months previously & were sitting on her lap in his file which i knew for fact as ive received a copy of all correspence to her myself. 5 months after that we were told that her colleagues ( not her) didn't think there was enough evidence to continue with the referal. This left myself, his teachers & the paediatrician gob smacked as he has a list of traits as long as my arm. The paediatrician said the EP (whos should be observing him in the next ccouple of months) should pick up on this & if necessary get a re-referal. So i was kind of wondering what are other peoples experiences with EPs?

Hi hally , I didnt want your question to go unanswered.

I have met lots of EP's on my journey both through my work and through having a Dd with Asd.

They are a real mix bag like any Proffs, some write excellent reoorts which include info from parents and are accurate, some write a load of tosh and you wonder if they were watching the right child!!

Dd3 was recently observed at school, shestruggles massively with anxiety and finds writing very difficult although verbally she is very able. So where and when does the EP observe her?? In her favourite room, with her favourite teacher (whose class she has been moved back into fom last year) and during a lesson intro, no pens or paper just verbal stuff!!!

So of course Dd3 looked just like any other child

It is very hard to get your child seen so I would defo go with it. I really hope you are lucky and your Ds gets a decent one.

Good luck

hi there, definitely get another referral. some are good some are quite frankly an insult to their profession. Our LA's EP did a shockingly inaccurate assessment for our Statement and then the LA based the Statement on her assessment! We are having to go to tribunal now to get it removed (amongst other things) and are having to pay privately for another EP to discredit her report. When this is all over I will be writing a formal complaint about her, not only to the LA but to the national board of Eps. she's got it coming, her shoddy work is costing us a fortune. she spent about 5 minutes trying to interact with our son who was tired and ready for a nap and not really interested in some stranger shoving some stupid one dimensional cards in his face and asking him to point out the right one (He wasn't even 3 then). so when he wouldn't 'perform' she said the following. "I can't come and see you again, this was your one opportunity, because he hasn't finished Im going to have to mark him as having a 'compressed cognitive ability"! We were horrified by her assessment and her attitude . Incompetent doesn't even come close - and she's the official LA Ed Psych. Its terrifying but the LAs basically take the advice of their EP for the Statements, its probably the most important assessment to get accurate otherwise the LA will fob you off.

We have also had an independent assessment for Dd3, the indie EP assessed both cognitive and functional abilities which showed a massive discrepancy between Dd3's verbal and written abilities.

We knew there were issues but had no idea why or what was causing them and now we have a much clearer idea.

I dont believe we could have got such a detailed assessment from the LA EP.

Also remember that the LA EP's are working for the LA so are unliky to go against them in a tribunal situation.