What can Ed Psy do?

[claw3]

Ds came home with a letter in his book bag arranging meeting for me with EP next week (she has not assessed ds)

Ds receives input from Dietitian, feeding clinic, OT, SALT, CAMHS and has received a verbal dx of ASD (being made official soon). He has sensory, self care, speech communication difficulties and anxieties and phobias.

Private EP in December identify that ds has the potential to be a gifted learner.

What can i expect EP to do?

Suggest strategies to bring out the best in him, for both you and school. Assess the environment he is currently in and how that affects his abiltiy to learn. Will she/he be assessing your ds again ?

We saw the EP a few weeks ago at home, he asked me about ds for three hours got the report yesterday. Ds' needs were assessed as severe and he will apparently be funded for a keyworker and a specialist teacher to train that person for mainstream pre-school when he starts.

Maybe something similar? I was gratified to read on the report that it was only an initial assessment and that educational targets are to be agreed between setting and parents.

Liz, EP hasnt assessed ds yet. She appears to want to talk to me first. I filled out 2 consent forms, giving permission to access ds records and the other giving my permission for her to assess ds.

Hopefully she will be assessing ds after our meeting.

Milady, so i just need to tell her my concerns and she should do the rest?

Hi Claw, DS is seeing ed psych at end of the month. I have pushed for this as schools tend to look at outcomes only i.e. is he reading ok? Is he reaching average levels relating to numeracy etc? They then conclude that things are ok.

However, I can see that DS has clear problems with working memory and other cognitive issues which will and do impede his learning ability. This was supported by BIBIC's assessment. This means that he is probably underperforming without assistance.

For example, DS will say we are learning about how plants grow. I say what have you learnt? He will say I don't know. Yet in calss he will follow what everyone else is doing and look like he's keeping up. Anyone spending 1:1 with him can see the issues.

The SENCO told me the other day that he was taking the class and DS just couldn't remember basic info like the alphabet even though they regard him as being bright. It also takes a lot of work to keep him engaged.

Working memory is supposed to be a more significant indiactor of academic success than IQ and a gap between IQ and working memory can cause very real frustration.

These are the sort of issues I will be flagging up for the ed psych along side changes to routine and social communication issues.

claw3, if you have reports from the other professionals involved, I would give copies to the EP yourself. You can't rely on the school or LA to pass them on. Also any other evidence, like home-school book, incident reports etc.

Also, you might want to put some concerns down in writing and give examples of incidents. The time that EPs spend with you can really vary - some will be willing to spend a couple of hours and others will just ask some brief questions and focus on child observation. So if there's any information that you definitely want them to know, it's worth putting it in writing otherwise you might not get a chance to discuss it.

My private EP has said that he has to pay attention to all advice provided to him - it would be unprofessional of him to ignore any advice. Not sure if LA EPs will be quite so scrupulous!

Better advice on this thread than I could give you claw since my son is only three, just didn't want to ignore your post

Thanks everyone. I will give her copies of reports and write a list of my concerns.