Consultation, as a psychological practice, involves the EP as consultant forming a collaborative partnership with one or more consultee(s) and where appropriate, key people in their lives, with the aim of exploring a situation brought by the consultee(s). Within this process, we seek to contain the feelings of the consultee(s) in relation to the situation in order to facilitate problem solving.

Through the process, we draw on the knowledge and skills of the cconsultee(s) to explore the situation together with the aim of developing a co-constructed understanding of the situation and, where appropriate, identifying hoped-for change in the situation, resulting in a plan as to how this might be achieved. 

Our work can often benefit from the use of creative tools and approaches such as person centred planning tools. All our team members have received training in the use of these techniques that can help adults manage complex case work and situations that feel stuck.

Assessment can be part of an ongoing consultation. The purpose of any assessment is to explore the child or young person’s needs and how we can work with them to help improve their outcomes. Assessment can include a range of information gathering activities such as observation of the child or young person, interviews with those that know them best, and discussion and work with the child or young person.

Our psychologists are qualified in the use of a wide range of assessment tools and approaches. These can include but are not limited to different types of standardised assessments, dynamic assessments as well as approaches and tools to obtain the views of children and young people. Dynamic assessment is an area of Educational Pyschology work that is less known to schools but can be incredibly valuable in revealing ways that a child can learn best and the type of support they would require to further develop their thinking skills and perform at their best. We will discuss all options in detail when creating a package of support.

Psychological intervention focuses on improving learning outcomes and promoting positive mental health and social inclusion at the level of the individual, group or organisation. We offer bespoke support with the identification of a wide range of learning, social, emotional and mental health needs as well as with the planning, setting up, delivery and evaluation of targeted interventions. 

We deliver a variety of parenting groups designed to help parents promote their child’s social, emotional and behavioural development. And also services specifically focused at support for parents and staff and teachers / other professionals.

Our range of therapeutic interventions include:

• Cognitive Behavioural Approaches 
• Friends for Life Resilience Programme
• Create and Talk (art-based approach)
• Mindfulness 
• Video Interaction Guidance
• Groups for Children and Young People 

We now offer a training course which supports bringing supervisory practice in schools. Supervision has been found to be an impactful way to increase staff wellbeing and retention in schools and to build a sense of community and belonging in schools where this is a routine part of what is offered. This course offers staff an opportunity to become skilled and build their confidence in holding their own supervisory conversations with others or to run supervision groups within their schools. It is ideal for senior members of staff or designated safeguarding leads.

We are also offering supervision packages for schools to buy supervision for individuals or groups from an Educational Psychologist. 

A critical incident can be defined as an event, usually sudden, which involves the experience of a level of significant distress that has the potential to overwhelm an individual or organisation. Often these events involve threat to life or well-being or may even involve death. There is research evidence that an early, well managed response can prevent longer term difficulty.

We have worked with schools and other settings following a wide range of incidents. As part of our critical incident support service:

• We provide training and information on the impact of critical incidents.
• We offer an emergency consultation service aimed at providing advice and support to those managing an incident.

We can also offer training for school managers entitled ‘Wise Before the Event’ to help schools think about their existing experience/ practice in relation to a critical incident and ways they can be prepared to respond to an unfortunate event that may impact the school community. This is highly recommended as part of a school’s suicide prevention strategy.

All our practitioners are experienced and highly skilled providers of training and supervision. We have knowledge and understanding of how others learn and of the most effective ways of supporting and facilitating learning.

We offer bespoke training and professional development that can support staff as well as schools’ performance development and strategic planning.  We offer training, professional development and support on a wide range of topics and support staff’s confidence and ongoing development of their quality first teaching practice and the delivery of the Ordinarily Available Provision.

Our offer includes:

• Child and adolescent development and learning
• Social, emotional and mental health
• Supervision and organisational development

ELSA Training

We are leading on Wandsworth’s ELSA (Emotional Literacy Support Assistant) training. ELSAs are Emotional Literacy Support Assistants. They are teaching assistants who have received specific additional training about social, emotional and mental health needs from Educational Psychologists, from whom they also receive on going supervision following training. The role of an ELSA is to support children and young people in school to understand and regulate their own emotions whilst also respecting the feelings of those around them. We are a member of the national ELSA network.

Our research and evaluation service offers schools and other services and organisations the opportunity to explore and evaluate context-based needs and outcomes. For example, one of our local mainstream schools used our service to research children’s experience of play time and used the outcomes to provide staff with further training and ideas to optimise creative play and behaviour in the playground. Another example involved one of our specialist provisions who used our service to design a collaborative action research approach to develop a pack of resources that allows the voice of all pupils to be heard whilst accommodating their level and nature of SEND.

In the past we have also supported Local Authority wide led research on children and young people’s sense of belonging, parental sense of belonging for families that attend a specialist resource base within a mainstream school, pupils views on the SEND local offer. We also played a key role in exploring children and young people’s experiences of the first lockdown and their feelings about returning to school.

With knowledge of statistics and research through our doctorate training, our staff are experts in developing questionnaires that take into account cyp’s developmental stages as well as different types of SEND and we can support schools in the analysis of information which can include pupil voice in all strategic planning.