Asessment
Psychological assessments can be extremely helpful in identifying your child’s strengths and weaknesses in several areas of functioning. These tests can help to identify learning styles and social-emotional patterns of functioning, which can be extremely helpful in designing effective interventions that are tailored to your child. Some parents seek out a psychological assessment when they have concerns about how well their child or teen is functioning, while others are advised to get an assessment by a professional who notice something amiss. No matter the reason for getting an assessment, the important thing is that these assessments can provide valuable information that can help to improve the functioning of children and teens.
education
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A psychological assessment should always consider the whole child. This means taking into account everything from family and school life to the child's community. Every child is different, so it's important that assessments are individualized and based on the specific needs of the child. If there are concerns that led to the referral, these should be addressed as well. Some of the things that a psychological assessment may include are:
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Behavioral, emotional and social development:
A social-emotional and personality evaluation is an important tool for understanding a child's mental health. The assessment can provide direction for behavioral management strategies to be used at home or school. If there are mental health concerns, the assessment can also provide therapists with information for treatment planning, including whether or not medication is appropriate. The results of the assessment can help to create a treatment plan for providing the best possible support for your child.
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Intelligence:
Intelligence tests help identify individuals who may have developmental delays, intellectual giftedness, or learning disabilities. They can also be used to determine an individual's strengths and weaknesses in different cognitive areas. Typically, an intelligence test will measure several cognitive skills including: language and communication skills, nonverbal reasoning skills, and speed at absorbing and processing new information. By looking at an individual's performance across these different skills, a child’s treatment team can get a better sense of their strengths and weaknesses, which in turn helps better tailor a child’s educational and treatment recommendations.
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Achievement:
Psychological and educational testing can play an important role in assessing a child's academic strengths and weaknesses. By measuring mastery of reading, mathematics, and writing skills, these tests can provide valuable information about a child's learning abilities and needs. In particular, these tests can help to identify learning disabilities such as dyslexia. For children with special needs, the psychological assessment can help to develop an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) at a Planning and Placement Team meeting (PPT). By working with the child's educators and caregivers, the IEP can help to ensure that the child receives the appropriate educational services and support.
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Memory and attention:
Neuropsychological testing is a valuable tool that can be used to identify a variety of conditions, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This set of tests can measure memory skills, reasoning abilities, and executive functioning, like planning and organizational skills. Neuropsychological testing is often used to identify ADHD because it can provide an objective measure of attention and impulsivity. This type of testing can also be used to rule out other potential causes of ADHD symptoms, such as learning disabilities or emotional disorders. In addition, neuropsychological testing can help to identify which specific interventions will be most effective for treating your child’s symptoms.
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Not all treatment providers are able to conduct a psychological assessment. Licensed clinical psychologists (i.e., professionals with a Ph.D. or Psy. D.) or credentialed school psychologists are expertly trained to administer assessments and tests and interpret the results. Licensed clinical psychologists have years of training, experience, and knowledge to select the right tests for each individual client.
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Typically, a psychological assessment involves a combination of questionnaires, structured interviews, and testing sessions. An evaluator will likely ask you to fill out multiple questionnaires related to your child’s development, medical, social, and academic history. The evaluator may also seek previous evaluations and/or school reports that you may have for your child. This is all in hopes to help create a detailed timeline of symptoms and severity of problems that they can integrate into their findings from testing.
In addition to the questionnaire completion, an evaluator will also interview your child, primary caregivers, and potentially school/community informants (e.g., teacher, therapist). The interviews will help provide information about your child’s strengths, weaknesses, and areas of particular concern.
The evaluator will also have formal testing sessions with your child. During these testing sessions, the evaluator will be looking at your child’s cognitive, educational, and social-emotional functioning.
The interviews, questionnaire completion, and testing sessions can be completed over a lengthy day process and/or broken up into several different sessions. Either way, parents should expect that the process for completing the testing and interviewing will take several hours. And while that may seem difficult to commit to, a comprehensive psychological assessment can be extremely valuable in helping tailor your child’s treatment and educational needs.
Once all of the testing, interviews, and data collection are completed, the evaluator will write a comprehensive report that includes the testing results as well as treatment/educational recommendations. Upon report completion, the evaluator will also schedule a time to review the results and recommendations with you (and your child if age appropriate).
During the feedback session, you are encouraged to ask as many questions as you may have about the results. No question is a bad question when it is helping you understand your child’s strengths, weaknesses, and ways that you can support their growth.
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Depending on your particular need, you may seek a psychological assessment from your school’s psychologist (if you are seeking IEP/504 accommodations) and/or outside providers.
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If you are a parent seeking resources from your school, it is important to highlight that when requesting an IEP from your school, you do have the right to have your child evaluated by an outside professional other than your school’s psychologist. To note, in many of these cases, you will have to pay for the private evaluation. Furthermore, while the school must consider the evaluation from the outside provider, they do not necessarily have to accept the results.
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•PAVE provides an article that includes various tools you can use to request an evaluation from your school district. Special education referrals must be made in writing.
Click here: Sample Letter to Request Evaluation.
Click here for a list of providers in your area that conduct psychological assessments.
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Once you have received the results of you child’s psychological assessment, you should try to follow the recommendations detailed by the evaluator. This may include discussing the report with your child’s current or future therapist, pediatrician, and/or school team. It will be important for everyone within your child’s treatment team to be on the same page when creating action plans.
As your child’s parent you are able to share the report with anyone you think would benefit from reading the materials. If you would like the evaluator to send the report and/or discuss the content with another person, you will need to make sure that you have signed appropriate releases of information that allow the evaluator to discuss this with that other individual.
As you may notice, psychological and educational testing can be a valuable tool in helping your child reach their full potential. Findings of a psychological assessment can not only help you better understand your child, but can also be used by your child’s school team to qualify them for academic accommodations in the classroom (e.g., a 504 Plan) or for more formal, individualized support (i.e., an Individualized Education Plan or IEP). In addition, findings from an evaluation can help guide clinical treatments and interventions.