Assessments

Assessments are a means of recognizing a child or individual’s personality, aptitude, abilities, behaviour as well as emotional functioning. Hence, assessments are important tools in understanding oneself better. Information obtained from assessments often includes identifying strengths as well as weaknesses that influence one’s performance or behaviour. Strengths can be used in a positive way to create meaning and to overcome one’s challenges. This can be done individually or with the assistance of a trained professional.

The Assessment process entails an:

1.Intake interview with the parents and/or child, to establish the exact requirements specific to the assessment referral and to explain the process and answer any questions one may have. (approximately 45min long)
2.Assessment: 4 to 6 hours (approximate guidelines)
3.Compilation of comprehensive report
4.Feedback session with parents and/or child

EduPsyC offers a wide range of assessments to suit all clients’ needs. These include:

Developmental Assessments:

Developmental assessments are provided for infants and children from 6 weeks to 7 years 11 months old. The aim of these assessments is to help gain insight into developmental strengths and weaknesses of a child. It also provides a complete picture of a child’s development, including:
• locomotor (gross motor coordination)
• personal-social reasoning and abilities
• language skills
• eye and hand co-ordination (fine motor coordination)
• performance skills; and
• practical reasoning

The assessment tool used is a multidisciplinary test that is also used by pediatricians, occupational therapists and speech therapists. This is important as the results of the test suggest the most strategic point/s of intervention and assistance for developmental delays.

School Readiness Assessments:

School-readiness assessments are a subset of psycho-educational assessments and are usually recommended for children in the Grade R year. A child is considered school ready when deemed to be able to cope with the formal demands of schooling. These demands are not only intellectual but also emotional, perceptual and conceptual. Hence, School readiness assessments provide a holistic investigation into important areas of a child’s development, including a child’s intelligence, aptitude and emotional ability to determine the preparedness of a child to start grade one. Particular aspects assessed include co-ordination, memory, personal and social reasoning, verbal comprehension as well as performance skills.

Obtaining all of this information is necessary to allow the Psychologist to create a developmental map of the child’s strengths and weakness; thus providing information on the child’s ability to successfully enter primary school as well as providing areas to focus assistance, intervention and growth.

Scholastic Assessments (Intellectual, educational and emotional assessments):

We provide scholastic assessments for children (from 6 years) and adolescents (teenagers). Scholastic assessments typically consist of assessing psychological aspects, and focuses on a child’s learning potential, academic skills as well as emotional development and functioning.

Psychological aspects include: intelligence, language skills, memory, verbal and visual learning, attention and concentration, planning ability and impulsive responsive styles. Academic skills may include: reading, spelling, writing, mathematics, academic fluency, listening comprehension skills and oral expressive skills. Assessing academic skills pick up specific problems such as mathematics or reading disorders that intellectual assessments (measuring cognitive ability) often cannot. Assessing a child’s emotional development and functioning helps gain a better understanding of the child's emotional world and how this - for example anxiety or depression - may impact their ability to function academically, occupationally and socially.

The purpose of such an assessment is to provide insight into a child’s intellectual and cognitive abilities, emotional state of mind as well as educational achievement levels. The aim of which is profiling the strengths, challenges as well as behaviour of a child so that specific suggestions and recommendations can be made to assist the child to reach his/her full, unique potential. Benefits of a psycho-educational assessment:
• A holistic approach is utilized in order to understand the learner;
• Possible learning barriers can be identified, providing an understanding for poor school performance
• An individual’s potential and strengths can be identified;
• Appropriate interventions and referrals to effectively support the learner will be established;
• Effective intervention strategies will be identified and recommendations for teachers and parents/caregivers will be provided (for example: extra lessons, remedial assistance, school placement, speech therapy, occupational therapy etc.).

Career Counselling and Assessments

Career Counselling focuses on guidance and facilitation in decision making with regards to study and career choice. This is often used in combination with Career Assessment to facilitate a holistic intervention. Career Counselling also entails creating awareness in clients of relevant information, sources or channels to support decisions and career development.

Career Assessments aim to support the client in the discovery and exploration of potential study and career opportunities. The assessment is aimed at integrating the client’s intellectual ability, personality, values, study methods as well as interests to facilitate his/her journey into promising future vocations. Furthermore, testing incorporates an individual’s history, preferences and meaning ascribed to their career. Projective tests to understand the emotional factors that may impact on the person's career and their decision making may also be taken into account. All the gathered information is collated into recommendations of specific area/s of study and occupation best suited to the individual client.

We provide career assessments for high school learners and adults. These assessments may be done for various reasons, such as:
• School subject choice: These assessments are aimed at assisting young learners with making an informed decision regarding their preference for school subjects. This is vital as it paves the way for a career path in the future.
• Deciding on further education and training: This is often a confusing time for many young adults as they struggle to find out what they want to do in their lives and where they see themselves in the future. A career assessment can shed light on which path to follow.
• Career changes and suitability: Often individual’s choose a career path but feel that that it is not suited to their personality, expectations or even aspirations for themselves. Some individuals have followed a career based on what others expect for them or what their parents choose as career paths. They are dissatisfied and unhappy; as a result they are unproductive and feel less confident in themselves. They may also experience a lack of enjoyment in their life. Having a career assessment can allow an individual to find a suitable career that matches their interests and personality and pursuing that suitable career path will lead to personal satisfaction.

Concession Assessments:

Concessions are usually for learners who experience specific learning difficulties, physical disabilities or other disabilities which will significantly impact on their examination performance and prevent them from demonstrating their true ability in the examinations.

The concessions have been designed to place students on an equal par with non-disabled students and not to give them any additional advantage. The aim of any examination process is to give an accurate account of the student’s knowledge or skills.

Concession and accommodation assessments are generally required by schools, education departments and the IEB when applying for learners to be granted the following concessions during examinations: Extra time, a prompter, a scribe (someone to write down their answers), a reader (someone to read the exam paper for them), amanuensis (a person who reads and scribes for the learner), handwriting concessions (for learners who suffer from dysgraphia), braille, enlarged print, use of a computer, practical assistant, rest breaks, separate venue, permission to use special equipment.

However, in order to qualify for a concession or accommodation, learners need to have been assessed and to show at least average intellectual ability and a significant long term learning disability which will compromise examination performance.

Play Therapy

Therapy for Children

EduPsyC provides therapy and counselling for children and adolescents. Our interventions are tailored to clients' specific needs. We offer brief, short-term and long-term psychotherapy. We specialize in working with a wide variety of difficulties. Some of these include:
• Relationship difficulties (with peers, teachers and/or parents)
• Anger issues
• Physical and sexual abuse
• Behavioural problems
• Substance abuse and addictions
• Anxiety, panic attacks, fears, phobias, obsessions and compulsions
• Trauma
• Depression
• Bereavement and Loss
• Disability and illness
• Adjustment and life stage difficulties
• Gender identity
• Difficulties with bladder and bowel control (enuresis and encopresis)
• Bullying
• Image, self-esteem and self-confidence
• Eating disorders

The type of therapy we use for children would depend on their age and maturity as well as their presenting problem. Play Therapy is suited for younger children (approximately from four to twelve years), whereas individual “talk” therapy is suited for older children (adolescents or teenagers).

The process followed in therapy is a collaborative one, whereby we prefer to work in conjunction with the parents as well as educators in order to optimally assist the child and to establish successful interventions for the child.

What is Play Therapy?

Children experience life very differently from adults. They often do not have the cognitive ability to fully process difficult experiences independently. They also lack the vocabulary and verbal expressive abilities that adolescents and adults have. Hence, children use play as their natural means of communication.

Therefore, play therapy allows the child to continue to communicate his/her feelings and experiences in a safe, non-threatening environment through a medium of play which comes natural for a child. Children are brought into a special room filled with toys where they can, via play therapy, recreate situations and events that may be affecting them and together with the psychologist, work through these issues. Some issues dealt with in therapy include but are not limited to, self esteem, social anxieties experienced either at home or in school, defiant behaviours, bullying, sibling rivalry, divorce, etc.

Play therapy assists children in understanding their emotions better and helps them to deal with difficult feelings or traumatic events in a healthy developmental manner. This allows children to be more assertive, confident and more easily able to adapt to difficult situations and events.

The process of play therapy involves an intake session with the parents/ caregivers alone before having a session with the child. The intake session with the parents is important as it allows the therapist to gather background information on the child’s developmental history as well as a full understanding of the presenting problem. This allows the therapist to structure the most suitable intervention for the child. If play therapy is required, then the psychologist will structure a play therapy program specific to the child. Parents are also involved in the process, either directly in the playroom or indirectly through parent guidence and support. As part of the play therapy process, parents are provided with feedback, recommendations and guidance regarding their child’s development as well as recommendations for what can be done at home or in the classroom to assist their child. However, parent guidance can also be a stand-alone intervention that can be very effective with certain difficulties.

Therapy and Counselling for Adolescents (Teenagers)

We provide individual psychotherapy and counselling for adolescents (teenagers). Interventions are tailored to the clients' specific needs. We offer brief, short-term and long-term psychotherapy. Some issues we work with in therapy include but are not limited to:
• Dealing with parental separation/ divorce
• Relationship difficulties (with peers, teachers and/or parents)
• Anger management
• Study skills and learning support
• Physical and sexual abuse
• Behavioural problems
• Substance abuse and addictions
• Stress and anxiety management
• Depression
• Trauma, Bereavement and Loss
• Death, disability and illness
• HIV and AIDS
• Termination of pregnancy
• Adjustment difficulties
• Life stage difficulties
• Sexual Orientation and gender identity
• Self-exploration and personal development
• Bullying
• Self-esteem and self-confidence
Adolescents are often at a stage in their life where they are finding themselves, are in the process of creating an identity and seeking independence. Hence, therapy is best suited to providing an individual and private space. Parents are involved in the process, only with regard to knowing the goals worked towards in therapy. Privacy is maintained and specific content of sessions are respected by the psychologist.

Workshops

Psychosocial Workshops:

That focuses on building happy relationships among educators within a school setting; improving occupational health; conflict management; stress management; goal setting and motivation; increasing productivity; building self-esteem and assertiveness. Teacher Training Workshops: to meet the needs of educators in which further training will be needed, for eg. Remedial assistance in the classroom; Understanding the ADHD/ADD learner within the classroom; Addressing barriers to learning; Addressing difficult behaviour; Enhancing strategies in reading; IEP (Individual Education Plans for learners with barriers) and Second Language learning, etc.

Psychological Talks and Training Workshops:

The idea behind providing the parents / caregivers with training is to create a positive and collaborative partnership between the educators and parents in order to adequately support the learner. Workshops can be tailored to suit the needs of the parents. Possible examples of Psychological Talks and workshops include, how to handle bullying, understanding my child who has ADHD, Psychological Importance of being a parent (behaviour management, quality time etc.) and many more.

Learner Workshops:

These workshops are specifically tailored to suit learners of various grades and ages. Topics will vary depending on the need at the school. Possible topics covered include, Bullying, Self-esteem, Respecting others, Study skills etc.

University Learner Workshops:

These workshops cover a variety of important topics that young adults experience. The aim of the workshops is to provide these learners with important knowledge and skills on how to navigate their lives in a new tertiary setting. Possible topics include Stress management, Dealing with Adjustment, Self-Esteem, Study Skills, Coping with Anxiety etc.