School Psychology Service

My aim is to provide a high quality, flexible, responsive, individualised service to schools helping to meet the needs and promote the progress of children with special educational, emotional or behavioural needs working at the individual, group and system level.

 

I work consultatively with all work embarked on decided in discussion with the schools SENCo, other senior staff and teachers and my input will be determined by the needs that present. This will include individual work and meeting with parents. The number of children worked with and the intensity of the intervention will vary according to need.  No CAF form is necessary for me to work with a child although if through discussion one is deemed necessary eg to access specific local authority services I can assist in compiling it.

 

 

Value added

Over the years I have built up a large knowledge base of skills and ideas to use to promote progress and achievement in children of all ages from nursery to post-16 thus adding to the already substantial knowledge base of school staff.  This includes:

• • Theories of dyslexia and dyscalculalia
• • Learning styles
• • Working memory and other memory difficulties and their effects on learning
• • Developmental delay
• • Neurological difficulties
• • Determining accurate differentiation
• • Psychodynamics and Transactional Analysis to explain the behavioural dynamics in groups and between pupils, teachers and parents
• • Behavioural strategies and development and effectiveness of whole school behaviour policy
• • The effect of teaching style and teacher affect
• • Focus, concentration and motivation
• • Circular causality (there may be more than one area where we can solve the same problem)
• • Cognitive behaviour therapy
• • Personal construct psychology
• • Self esteem
• • Attachment difficulties and their effect on learning and behavior
• • I use both standardised and dynamic assessment to determine pupils levels and the strategies that they respond best to that promote progress

 

I can also give sound advice on meeting the needs of pupils with:

• • Autistic Spectrum Condition: I can advise on reducing anxiety, improving behaviour, overcoming some of the difficulties that may be caused by impaired central coherence, executive functioning and language understanding and relationships with other pupils.
• • Global developmental delay: I can determine relative cognitive strengths and weaknesses so that in learning we can capitalise on the child’s strengths
• • Dyspraxia (may signpost to Occupational Therapist)
• • Physical difficulties (may signpost to Occupational Therapist)
• • ADHD
• • English as an additional language

I liaise with all professionals involved with a child to ensure that school and parents are given consistent advice and ensure integrated working.

I also have experience of helping schools develop at the systems level including:

• • Whole school Soft Systems Methodology to push through complex changes in behaviour management
• • Working with a school to develop all aspects of their SEN system
• • Working with a school to develop a whole school literacy strategy and system
• • Working with a school to help develop and fine tune their behaviour management policy

Finally I have considerable experience of successfully supporting schools through trauma with a critical incident response using research based approaches that reduce the likelihood of post traumatic stress syndrome developing in staff or pupils and ensure that schools return to smooth running as rapidly as possible.