Educational Psychologist

Megan had a visit from an Educational Psychologist today. Its part of her ongoing assessment/getting ready for education episode.

He was a nice bloke who didn’t try to hard to ingratiate himself with Megan (behaviour thats always a guarantee of a few moments of awkward silence on the ingratiators part- Megan couldn’t give a monkeys). He explained that his data gathering methods would be two-fold.

First he would watch Megan- how she played, what she played with, how she interacted with Naomi and I etc. Secondly, he would be asking Naomi and I questions about what Megan knew in the three key areas of communication, development and interaction. The whole thing took about half to three quarters of an hour and we never felt pressured or compelled to defend aspects of Megans behaviour, which I can understand parents needing to do in some situations.

The kind of questions we were asked were fairly routine ones that we’ve already become used to hearing from Health Care professionals- does Megan talk? How does she communicate? Does she play with dolls? etc etc. All questions that were easy to answer.

All through this Megan was quite happy to do her own thing (as she always is) in that she would come and hug us or watch the TV (the Sky Guide-channel 998- is the channel du jour at the moment) or sing a song or bash my keyboard etc.

The upshot of all this was that the EP said he would write up a report based on his observations and that his recommendations would be to get Megs into a special needs nursery ASAP, which dovetailed nicely with what Megs Health Visitor felt was best and we should get Speech Therapy sorted as a priority-which we were happy to inform him we had well in hand.

I asked about a Statement of Needs for Megan. A Statement is apparently a very vital document that details what each child should recieve in terms of their education. It is vital that this Statement be precise and detailed with no vagueness in either provision or intent. The EP told me that this meeting was the first step to getting the Statement drawn up so I’m hoping this is the case- apparently getting a Statement is notoriously difficult so I’m still a bit wary.

I’ll keep this blog updated with the results of the report as we get it.