Are you looking for ways to support your child or adolescent but are not sure how? Is your child experiencing challenges within the school, social, or home environments?

 

Psychological Testing can help to identify new ways to foster your child or teenager's learning potential, executive functioning skills, and social-emotional health.

 

Psychological Testing is an informative process that is tailored specifically to the particular individual(s) requesting the assessment. 

 

Psychological Testing can be quite helpful to your child or teenager's progress in therapy, once further information about psychological, social/emotional, and cognitive funcitoning can be incorporated into a treatment plan.

 

In my pratice, the Evaluation Process for psychological/psychoeducational testing will typically compose of the following:

 

• A brief phone consultation to sort out referring questions and determine if it is appropriate to schedule an evaluation. This is usually followed by an email with all paperwork attached so that the parents have ample time to review and complete prior to first meeting.

 

• Next, I meet with a parent(s) for a 60-minute appointment to describe the evaluation process in more detail, to obtain a thorough developmental history, and to generate a specific set of questions to guide the evaluation. This helps to dictate what test instruments and forms to use. During this meeting, the parent(s) will receive all parent and teacher questionnaires that will be integral to the assessment. Parents are asked to give these forms to teachers to complete and return on the date of the evaluation.

 

• Most evaluations include one to two days of face-to-face testing with your child or adolescent. In total, this can range from 3 hours to 6 hours and is typically started at the beginning of the child’s school day. Because of the nature of much of the testing, it is important that the testing begin when your child is fresh in the morning even though this requires that your child will miss part or up to all of one school day. I am able to accommodate your schedule if your child absolutely cannot miss a school day.

 

• I regularly collaborate with other professionals  who may be working with your child or adolescent, with your written consent. During the evaluation, I engage in phone call consultation with other providers such as teachers, therapists, and physicians, in order to obtain a rich and well-integrated perspective of your child's functioning.  

 

• When I have compiled, scored and interpreted all data from the child, parents, and any other informants such as school personnel or therapists, I meet with parents for a 60-minute feedback appointment to discuss results and recommendations from the testing. During this time, we discuss the comprehensive report that I will be providing parents; it is common that the report may not be completed until after our feedback discussion, because almost always, the parent(s) and I collaboratively discover important points to include in the recommendations/report. I also regularly meet with teenagers (age 13 and up) for a separate, individual feedback appointment if desired, to share about test results and collaborate regarding recommendations.

 

• A comprehensive report will be given to the parent(s) only. It will not be shared with any other person or professional without the written consent of the parent(s).The parent(s) may utilize and share the report with others of their choosing, such as for the purpose of obtaining special education services, gaining private school admission, modifying accommodations under a child’s IEP or 504 plan, or updating a therapeutic treatment plan with their child’s mental health provider.

 

• Following the evaluation, I encourage the parent(s) to review the written report and contact me with any follow up consultation questions and/or with requests for finding community resources not already outlined in the recommendations. I am happy to schedule additional appointments to collaborately establish a course of action with your family. I am also available to consult with school staff and/or mental health providers regarding evaluation findings.