Ed Psych update

[debs40]

You may recall my concerns about seeing the Ed Psych this week.

She is coming in on Wednesday after half term now and says she will speak to me and then:

"I normally sit with a few different children while I am observing so that one child doesn't feel singled out and also to compare work, listening skills etc. I will also consult with the teacher. This is the 'usual' first visit and any further actions would be planned during or after this time"

Sounds to me like this is going nowhere. I had wanted the referral to deal with the specific working memory/auditory processing problems picked out by BIBIC (in December) and the problems we can see sometimes.

I can see it will be a case of go in, looks ok, well done teacher.

This won't affect the dx process though will it? She can feed into the panel. I have written to EP setting out our specific concerns and explaining that he is getting quite alot of help from school to deal with some of these issues.

Well, we have the "any further actions would be planned during or after this time". Her response will be, that is for my professional judgment after I have seen him etc.

I've written asking her to clarify if she only intends to do a classroom observation and whether cognitive assessments will be done only if she feels they're necessary. I have then asked, very politely, for her to explain the difference between her classroom assessments and Autism Outreach's.

I don't want to put her back up because I have had contact with other EPs in her dept who have been very helpful and supportive but I just want to be clear where we're going and obviously I need to be there for any 1:1 cognitive assessments so I need to ask this up front.

True star, too true. I might use that!

To her credit, EP has emailed back already and said she is very happy for me to ask these questions and will get back on Tuesday to discuss it all with me.