What is an Educational Psychologist?
We are often asked “what is an educational psychologist?”
Educational psychologists core role is to support children and young people with differences and difficulties that may affect their learning.
This means that we cover a broad range of areas, including thinking and learning skills, social and emotional development, sensory differences and understanding and responding to all forms of communication. We often get involved when there is a need for increased understanding of a child’s strengths, needs and how to support positive outcomes, including when a situation feels stuck or there needs to be a holistic overview that brings together advice and guidance from multiple sources.
We focus on using a range of tools, including:
- Consultation
- Observation
- Understanding your child’s views and hopes
- A range of different psychological assessment materials, including checklists, questionnaires, learning tests and sometimes more creative approaches, based on your child.
One of the main tools we use is consultation. This is a solution focused process where we work with parents, teaching staff and other important adults in a child’s life to promote sustainable change through a shared understanding of your child and recommendations for support.
During consultation, we identify strengths, priorities for change, generate ideas about what is happening by applying psychology (hypotheses) and work collaboratively to develop action plans. Our action plans usually include recommendations for strategies that enable ideas (hypotheses) to be tested, to refine our understanding of your child’s strengths, differences and what works to support them, over time.
Often parents and teaching staff put in place the recommendations we have made independently. We can provide interventions or, more commonly, provide training to teaching staff and supervision so that the intervention can continue without us over time.
We are not medical professionals and, therefore, we do not diagnose ADHD, autism or provide other medical diagnoses. In fact, we don’t tend to use the word diagnosis for autism or ADHD as we view them as naturally occurring differences and therefore prefer the term ‘identified as’. We can advise whether an assessment may be a helpful next step, as well as providing recommendations for environmental changes and support to meet your child’s needs before or after an assessment.
We can carry out assessments to identify dyslexia and dyspraxia, if there has been structured support in place using an evidence informed programme for at least a year and if you and your child feel identification with the label dyslexia or dyspraxia would be helpful.
You can also learn more about educational psyschology on the British Psychological Society website
Frequently Asked Questions for Family EP Services
We provide assessments across Greater London. We charge for time and travel from our educational psychologist’s London base, when the time to the school exceeds 45 minutes by public transport.
We may be able to offer services outside Greater London. Travel and time will be charged. Please get in touch to find out more.
We will always let you know the full cost before we ask for payment.
This will depend on the time we have available when you contact us. We will always let you know how long you can expect to wait before we take payment for a service.
We aim to send written reports and records to you within 4 weeks. We will send the report to you directly by your preferred method. We encourage you to share with the school.
We prefer to work with the school, where possible. We feel collaboration is key to understanding your child’s strengths, needs and how to tailor intervention based on their real lives. We also like to work with children and young people in their school setting, as this enables us to observe them in their school setting and carry out assessments in a familiar space.
If it is not possible to work with your child’s school, please contact us. For example, if you are providing education at home or there has been a breakdown in relationship with the school.
- Learning and thinking skills, including exploring reading and maths differences
- Communication, including friendships, relationships and neuro-affirming approaches for autistic children and young people
- Emotional wellbeing, including behaviours that others find challenging, neuro-affirming approaches for ADHD and sensory and emotional barriers to attending school
- Sensory differences
- Differences that may be related to being born early
We tailor our assessments to your child. This might include a combination of standardised assessments, including for thinking skills, reading, writing and maths, play based assessment, the use of questionnaires and checklists, dynamic assessment (we will explain what this means and why it can be helpful), assessments where we use the learning your child is working on in their education setting to assess how they manage the task, working with your child directly to understand their views and any opportunities/barriers and observation.
Yes. Depending on the nature of the intervention, we may be able to provide this at an agreed cost either by an educational psychologist or an assistant educational psychologist, working under the supervision of an educational psychologist.
Yes. A private educational psychology report can be included as evidence in an EHCP application. The local authority will likely also ask their own educational psychologist to provide advice if they move forward with the EHCP needs assessment. The decision on whether an EHCP will be issued is made by the local authority.
Sometimes parents are unhappy about the decisions the local authority has made in relation to an EHCP. They have the right to appeal to a SEND Tribunal. We do not currently provide services related to tribunals, including acting as an expert witness.
No. We can use screeners and explore through consultation, observation and assessment whether an assessment may be a helpful next step.
Yes. We can carry out assessments for dyslexia and dyscalculia, if you and your child feel this may be a helpful term for them to use for their differences. We can provide guidance on talking to your child about this decision. If not, we can also explore their individual learning strengths and differences, including for reading and maths. Before carrying out a dyslexia or dyscalculia assessment we ask that at least one year of targeted support for reading for dyslexia and maths for dyscalculia has been in place.
No. You may find it helpful to talk to your GP or an occupational therapist.
Yes. Katie is trained to assist in developing environments and routines that support sensory processing needs. We are not sensory integration practitioners and, therefore, we do not offer therapeutic interventions. We advise speaking to a qualified sensory integration practitioner, often occupational therapists.
Yes, but we do not provide therapy or diagnosis. Our involvement would be short term and focused on understanding the young person’s strengths, needs and recommending provision related to improving access to education, including learning and social opportunities. If your primary concern is mental health, please speak to your GP and school mental health lead. If you are concerned that someone is at immediate risk of danger, please call 999.
No. We will always provide our own independent, professional view in line with BPS and HCPC criteria. We do not work with parents and schools where they would like us to support their specific viewpoint. This means that when reviewing our reports we usually only make factual amendments.
Frequently Asked Questions for Supervision Services
Our supervision packages are available for assistant, trainee, newly qualified and experienced EPs working in all settings, as well as practitioners working on the whole school and college approach to mental health and wellbeing, including teaching staff, SENDCos, SMHLs and those working in MHSTs.
Katie spent over four years working to establish and lead MHSTs for an NHS Trust because she believes passionately in the impact an effective whole school approach can have for children and young people. During this time, she had the privilege to work with and learn from an incredible group of people. She also had the opportunity to offer professional supervision to practitioners and educational psychologists within MHSTs, in both the NHS and not for profit sector.
Yes. Get in touch to explore further.
