What to expect from an Educational Psychologist report

The Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) sets out 15 professional standards (with 170 aspects) for practitioner psychologists. The standards of proficiency for practitioner psychologists. No.7 is communicate effectively – there are 16 elements to this, one is:

7.8 Understand the need to provide service user or people acting on their behalf with the information necessary, in accessible formats, to enable them to make informed decisions.

One form of communicating that EPs use is report writing.The end product might be a report, but understanding how EPs do report writing is important to understand why reports from EPs can be very different.

Understanding how local authority EP services work

• Early Years – core work (funded by the LA)
• School work – traded and/or core
• Other commissioned work – e.g., EP in YOS, EP in Virtual School, EP in Autism Diagnostic Clinic, etc.
• Statutory – psychological advice for the EHC needs assessment.
• Statutory Annual Review – core or traded (depends on the LA)
• Statutory Tribunal – If there is a question for the EP

All these different types of work will lead to different types of EP involvement, assessment, and reporting.

The principles for psychological report writing

• Do no harm with our words.  EPs are aware of the ‘weight of their words’ and should not over-reach what can be known about a child at any point in time.
• Provide a written report that will act as an intervention and be beneficial to the child.  It brings understanding, it encourages wider perspective taking, it recommends the types of actions that will influence the actions and behaviours of other people in the child’s system.
• Has the whole child in mind, regardless of the type of report.
• Consider who will read the report and how best to present the information so that it is easily understood, and key messages are ‘heard’ and not lost in the detail.
• Demonstrates comprehensive understanding of child development and intersectionality with various equity, diversity, and inclusion factors.
• Ensure the report is person-centred and the child or young person’s voice is present.

Psychological reports should…

not be just reported descriptions of what EPs have been told without any psychological interpretation. EPs ask questions, they listen to people’s views and child views, then take all aspects of the assessment into consideration and apply psychological theory. Then a psychological interpretation is made of what is seen as the factors impacting on the child’s ability to learn.

Include consideration of possible environmental factors, such as cognitive abilities, emotional responses, behaviours, etc. These must all be considered within the context the child is learning and living in.  What are the factors in their environments, in their historical-cultural worlds, in their physical and biological selves, in the social aspects of education, home, leisure etc.

The Child and Young Person’s Voice

To be truly person-centred the views of the child or young person must be considered when planning an assessment, formulating the psychological interpretation of what has been learnt from the assessment, and when recommending what the actions of other’s should be. EPs need to use their knowledge and skills of special educational needs and communication styles to decide on the most appropriate way of hearing and listening to the child or young person’s views. 

Assessments

Direct Assessments

Direct assessment is not always required.  When it is, it is based on either, what is not known about the child/young person and requires some deeper understanding, or what has been chosen to focus on as part of the consultation process.

• Observations of the child in their setting, in a range of settings (home, class, playground, etc.)
• Cognitive assessment - how the child/young person’s capacity for learning is understood.
• Emotional wellbeing assessment - how is the child/young person’s emotional resilience a factor in being able to learn.
• Socio-linguistic assessment how is the child’s language and communication skills affecting relationships and the conditions for accessing learning?

Cognitive Assessment

Standardised assessments:

Provide a statistical measure of cognitive ability where the child is measured against a ‘norm’ based on a set of test assumptions. Useful for:

• Identifying a strength in thinking or a weakness that might explain behavioural approaches to learning.
• Clarifying if there is a cognitive aspect to slower academic progress.

Can be unhelpful if:

• Under-estimates ability, or if environmental and emotional aspects are not fully understood by the reader of the report
• Cannot tell you how the child responds to support (mediation) by a more knowledgeable other.

Dynamic assessments:

Provide a wider measure of cognitive ability. Useful for:

• Wider understanding of how a child approaches a task.
• Mediation as it provides a relaxed approach to testing, and supports a child to persevere for longer, or not be overwhelmed with anxiety.

Consultation

Consultation is a form of assessment; consultation involves skilful questioning by the EP and careful listening to responses. The aim of consultation is to ensure all parties understand how each other view the problem. When the problem/issue/barrier is understood, then next step actions are explored. These are then jointly agreed, and a review date is set to check progress.

Reports

Reports are not usually word for word representations of the consultation, they are a shorter synopsis of the key points discussed. The key information recorded will be the agreed actions, who will do them, by when, and when they will be reviewed.

Working with Schools

• This is usually traded work – schools buy in EP services.
• Schools are allocated a link EP.
• They have a set number of visits which can be based on what the school decide to buy in, or the what the EP service can offer depending on capacity to provide.
• The SENCO and EP plan the work for the term.
• SENCOs suggest children to the EP that they would like to discuss and decide if EP involvement is required.
• In the current climate, prioritisation of cases is a significant aspect of this.

Recommended Provision

EP recommended provision describes what other’s need to do with the child, or how they need to prepare the work for the child/young person, or what kind of activities children need to engage in (independently or otherwise) to be able to access learning in the classroom.

Sometimes these are specific programmes, e.g. an evidence-based literacy programme, but mostly they are specific about how learning is presented to children and which tools they need to be given so that they can access learning.

Annual Reviews

EPs taking part in Annual Reviews is not statutory and depends on the Local Authority, e.g., it may be core funded (by LA) or expected to be provided through the setting’s own EP time.  EPs will only be involved in Annual Reviews if there is a clear question for the EP. These reports tend to include:

• What the question is for the EP
• Evidence gathered
• Any further recommendations for actions – these do not necessarily require the EHCP to be changed. 

Education Health & Care Needs Assessments (EHCNA)

There is no expectation that EPs will continue to provide updated assessments for EHCNAs. Settings should use their best endeavours and their SEN top-up funding through EHC Plans to provide continuous monitoring and review of progress, and this includes accessing external professional advice as and when needed. The EHCNA is a considerable assessment and termly monitoring and Annual Reviews should keep information about the child up to date in their setting. 

Tribunal Reports

These are reports written for the LA when they are gathering evidence to for an appeal. Although EPs are ‘local authority officers’ they still assess and write reports based on professional standards and ethical codes of practice. This means objectivity and maintaining an unbiased position.

These reports usually include

• EPs experience and knowledge of the LA, setting, child/young person.
• What aspect of the appeal the EP is providing a professional view on.
• The specific questions that the SEN Legal Rep has asked the EP to respond to.
• Sources of evidence.
• Rationale for evidence gathering, analysis of assessment, findings presented as psychological formulation.
• Summary that clearly answers the questions posed to the EP.
• Recommendations.