Educational psychology

What is an educational psychologist (EP)?

An EP is trained in psychology and child development. They work in partnership with parent carers, schools and other education settings to understand children and young people’s needs, so they can plan ways to support them.

It takes at least eight years to train as an EP. The training includes an initial psychology degree, work with children and completing a doctorate in educational psychology.

How can an EP help children and young people?

EPs plan their support based on the concerns for your child. EP involvement will usually start with a consultation meeting, typically including parent carers and other adults that know your child well.

The aim of the meeting is to build a shared understanding of the concerns for your child, and to agree what action will be taken to help. Often this meeting will be enough to identify some helpful actions for the school, setting, or parent carers to trial.

In some cases further involvement from the EP will be agreed, such as meeting with your child to complete activities to better understand their needs. We may also spend some time in their classroom, talking further with the adults that know them well, or reviewing their work.

We want to talk to you as part of this process to help us understand your child’s strengths, interests and difficulties. It helps us if you can share a little about what life is like in your family – what is fun and works for you all and what might be more difficult for you.

After the consultation meeting a record of involvement will made available for all involved. This is a short written document that includes a summary of the discussion and key actions agreed for your child.

Review process

The school or setting can use the agreed action plan at the earliest opportunity. We will aim to review the action plan later in the term, typically six to eight weeks after the initial meeting.

For many children, the actions agreed in the initial consultation work well to support their needs. This may mean that no further involvement from the EP is needed.

In schools and settings, working in this way is called a Graduated Approach or Special Educational Needs (SEN) Support. This approach is based on the good practice known as an assess-plan-do-review cycle.

Sometimes, for a very few children, the situation is a little more complicated. Their progress may seem to be ‘stuck’ and parents or carers and staff in school think that some more in-depth work from the EP is needed.

Contribution to education, care and health needs assessments

For most children, the support described above works well to help them make the most of their time in school. For a very few children with significant needs, which persist over time, more joint assessment and planning may be needed, and an education, health and care (EHC) needs assessment is requested from the SEND Statutory Team.

The Educational Psychology Service is commissioned by Devon County Council to provide assessment and written educational psychology advice as part of an EHC needs assessment. This fulfils part of the council’s statutory (legal) obligation to request educational psychology advice as part of an EHC needs assessment. Our reports are known as ‘psychological advice’ within the assessment process.

What will a psychological advice report cover?

Once an EP has completed an EHC needs assessment, they will normally provide psychological advice in the form of a report.

The report may cover the following areas:

Assessment

• Sources of information (this may refer to previous EP support).
• Views and aspirations of your child or young person.
• Views of parent(s) or carer(s) and school staff.
• A short summary of important background information.
• Input from other professionals.
• Developmental assessment and educational attainment, including factors such as communication and interaction, cognition and learning, social, emotional and mental health, sensory and/or physical needs.
• Psychological formulation and summary – this is where the EP draws together all the information that has been considered – they will give an explanation about what they think are the key facts about your child’s learning and summarise their needs.

Outcomes

• Where the EP has undertaken a Joint Assessment Meeting (JAM) it is likely that they will have discussed and agreed a number of outcomes. These will reflect the progress that parent carers, the young person, and other adults that know the young person well, hope will be achieved within a specific timescale.
• This usually includes long-term aspirations (goals), for example the progress to be made by the end of the next key stage.
• We expect schools and other education settings to set and monitor short term targets that may not always be included in education, health and care (EHC) plans.

Educational provision, facilities and resources

• Curriculum needs.
• Approaches to teaching and learning.
• Individual support needs.

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

If you have any queries, please talk with your school in the first instance. If you then still have further queries or questions, please contact us. You can email educationlearnersupport@devon.gov.uk.

---

Information for schools about the Educational Psychology service.