Educational psychology: guidance for parents

An EP is someone who helps children learn and feel happy and safe at school. They listen to families and school staff, and work out what a child finds easy or hard, so everyone can plan ways to help.

EPs do a lot of training before they can do this job. They study how children think and learn, and they spend time working with children and schools. This training includes an initial psychology degree, working with children, and completing a doctorate in educational psychology.

All our educational psychologists are registered with the Health and Care Professions Council and are Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checked.

Consultation meetings

Educational Psychologists (EPs) try to help with the concerns people have about your child. They usually start with a meeting where you (parents or carers) and school staff talk together. We want to talk to you as part of this meeting because we believe parents and carers know their child best, and have important information to share with us.

The point of the meeting is to clearly understand the concerns, and agree on what everyone will do to help. Often, this meeting is enough to agree some useful things for school, parents and carers to try.

Before the meeting

• You don’t need to prepare anything, but it can help the EP to think about what is working well, things your child enjoys, and any worries you have about their education, development or wellbeing.
• To support everyone to feel comfortable to speak freely, the meeting will take place in a private space (usually at school), or online.

During the meeting

At the meeting you’ll be able to share your views and listen to other people, to make sure that you all fully understand what is going on. The EP will keep a written record of this meeting, including any actions that are agreed, and will set a date for the review.

After the meeting

Any agreed actions should be put into place as soon as possible. There might be things to do at home or at school. The school or setting can start using the action plan as soon as it is agreed.

Sometimes, the EP may do some work in addition to the meeting. For example, they might meet your child and do some activities to understand what helps them best. They may also spend time in the classroom, talk more with adults who know your child well, or look at their school work.

Reviewing progress

The Educational Psychologist will lead a meeting to check how things are going, usually about six to eight weeks after the first meeting. It’s important that the key people who came to the first meeting also come to this review.

For many children, the actions agreed in the initial consultation work well to support their needs. This may mean the EP does not need to be involved again. Alternatively, there may be new actions followed by another review.

For a small number of children, things can be more complicated, and we may not see the progress we had hoped for by the time of the review meeting. Parents or carers and school staff may feel the EP needs to do more detailed work to understand what will help.

In schools and settings, working like this is called SEN Support. Adults supporting your child should plan and try out any agreed strategies and then check if they have been helpful (review).

For most children, the support identified after a consultation works well.

For a small number of children with significant needs, more joint assessment and planning may be needed, and an education, health and care (EHC) needs assessment is requested from the SEND Operations Team.

The Educational Psychology Service is asked by Devon County Council to give advice as part of this assessment. It is a legal requirement for an EP to provide advice as part of this process. We write a report to explain what we have found and what we think your child needs. Our reports are known as ‘psychological advice’.

The report may cover the following areas:

Assessment

• Where information came from (this might include EP support in the past).
• What your child or young person thinks and hopes for.
• What parents or carers and school staff think.
• A summary of important background information.
• Information from other people who work with your child.
• How your child is doing in learning and in school life, including things like talking and listening, learning and thinking, friendships and feelings, and any hearing, sight, movement, or health needs.
• A clear summary that brings all the information together, explaining the main things that affect your child’s learning, and what their needs are.

Outcomes

• If the EP has held a meeting where everyone plans together (known as a Joint Assessment Meeting or JAM for short) they will usually agree some outcomes. These are the changes that parents or carers, the young person, and the adults who know them well hope to see by a certain time.
• This can include bigger goals for the future, for example what they hope will be better by the end of the next key stage.
• Schools and other education settings should also set and check smaller, shorter goals, even if these are not written in the main plan.

Educational provision, facilities and resources

• What your child needs to learn in school.
• Ways of teaching that are most helpful.
• Any extra help your child needs.

All our educational psychologists are DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) checked to make sure they are safe to work with children.

If you have any questions, please talk with your school first. If you then still have questions after that, please contact us. You can email educationlearnersupport@devon.gov.uk.