When your child’s behaviour at school or home is very challenging or difficult to manage, a psychoeducational assessment can provide information to determine if the difficulty is an emotional or behavioral problem. Children who have emotional difficulties can experience problems making friends, communicating, isolating themselves, and exhibit excessive worry, fear of making mistakes or sadness.

Children with behavioral difficulties can be defiant, oppositional, argumentative, and display rule breaking behaviors. Clarification of these factors can help to determine the nature of the difficulty and provide a direction for treatment, supportive interventions, and accommodations in school to promote growth.

Typically, psychoeducational assessments are introduced as a result of teachers or school personnel noticing that a student is having intellectual, academic, or emotional/behavioural challenges. Teachers are experts at observing the progress of students, and in addition to parents, are usually the first to notice that a student is not progressing at the same pace as other students. This may mean that the student is struggling in acquiring basic academic skills in reading, mathematics, and writing.

Teachers periodically evaluate achievement levels of their students to ensure that they are developing skills at pace with their classmates. Development of these skills can be observed as early as kindergarten, but the introduction of a psychoeducational assessment usually does not occur until late grade 2 or in grade 3. In clear cases where the student is showing extreme under development, a psychoeducational assessment can occur before Kindergarten.

In Kindergarten, teachers closely monitor and assess the development of students in a classroom. In the Edmonton area teachers use the early years evaluation – teacher assessment tool, which is utilized to assess five areas of functioning. These five areas include a student’s awareness of self and environment, social skills and approaches to learning, cognitive skills, language and communication, and physical development.

If any of these five areas are determined to fall within an extremely limited range, targeted interventions are provided to the student to promote their growth. Parents are informed of these areas and are included in helping their child to grow. In such cases, the student is supported with an individual program plan (IPP), which may incorporate interventions such as speech therapy, occupational therapy (to address fine motor skills such as printing/ gross motor skills such as large movements), extra support in the classroom from the teacher or educational assistant, and behavioural support.

Common milestones that parents talk about with other parents, such as your child’s first words, or when the child begins walking can be easily noticed as typical or not through conversations with other parents.

Most children begin walking between one and 1.5 years old, and may speak single words around one year as well. Around 18 months old, many children are able to name some shapes, colours, and repeat other words. At around the age of two years old, most children can form a short sentence of a few words. A parent may first become aware that there child may have a delay through conversations with other parents, or through observing that one of their children did not develop as quickly as others.

Developmental concerns, including social skill development, awareness of self in the environment, and cognitive skills, are best brought to the attention of the child’s pediatrician or physician. If your child has significant delays, early intervention programs and psycho-educational assessment can be accessed through the help of your child’s pediatrician.

If your child’s teacher or school personnel have concerns about your child’s progress in school, or you as a parent are observing delays in areas such as reading, writing, mathematics, or thinking, a basic psycho-educational assessment utilizes measures of intelligence and academic skills to determine strengths and limitations in these areas.

The reason that intelligence (IQ) is measured is to ensure that potential academic challenges in reading, writing, and mathematics are not related to the students’ intellectual capacity. That is, the ability to manage the thinking and reasoning demands of their educational program. Intelligence results also help to provide some insight into the students preferred learning style, strengths and limitations, short term memory, and mental thinking speed.

If it is determined that the student presents with average to above intellectual abilities, then any academic struggles are assumed to be related to learning struggles and not intellectual capacity. Following this, results from an academic assessment can reveal limitations and strengths in their reading, writing, and mathematics. These academic results are helpful in providing information about areas of strength and the possibility of specific learning disabilities that may be present.

An assessment can also determine your child’s individual intellectual strengths and weaknesses as well as provide your child with the necessary educational planning and assistance to create a successful learning plan and environment.

Although it is most common to have psycho-educational assessments for primary grade school students, parents of adolescents and even young adult students may pursue psycho-educational assessment. Assessments for these individuals is encouraged to help adolescents or young adults understand their learning styles and to receive supports or accommodations that will facilitate success as course material in high school and post secondary becomes more challenging.

Furthermore, some post-secondary institutions require psycho-educational assessments with psychologist recommended provisions to maintain existing accommodation from high school.

• An initial parent interview with a psychologist to identify which assessments are appropriate
  for your child and gather background information
• Two hours with the child to assess intellectual ability (WISC V)
• One and a half hours with the child to assess academic skills (WIAT-III)
• Psychologist gathers the parent and school data (e.g., behavioral questionnaire – BASC 3) from
  the initial meeting, followed by scoring all assessment material, interpreting results and
  generating a report for the family
• Final parent meeting to discuss assessment results. Teacher are welcome to attend

A full psycho-educational assessment includes one day of academic and cognitive testing, a number of self-report and parent report questionnaires that can be completed online, and one to two interviews with parents as well as teachers and counselors if necessary.

A follow-up debrief of the assessment results is also completed when the report is finished to address questions from the results and recommendations. The process generally takes 2-4 weeks in entirety.

When needed, referrals to other professionals including speech language pathologists, occupational therapists, and pediatricians/physicians are provided. Direct referrals to child psychiatrists can be provided as well.

The total cost of an assessment is dependent upon the type of assessment tool used and the number of tools required. Your assessing psychologist will be able to provide a close estimate of cost prior to conducting the assessment. Below are estimated costs for commonly used assessments:

• Intellectual assessment WISC V (ages 6 – 17 years) – estimate $1,000
• Academic assessment WIAT III (ages 6 – 17 years) – estimate $1,000
• Behavioural assessment BASC 3 (ages 2 – 18 years) – estimate $1000
• Psycho-educational assessment (WISC V, WIAT III, BASC 3) – estimate $1,500-$2,000

A psycho-educational assessment might be covered in part or in whole by your employee health benefits plan or through other health insurance or extended health care coverage.

You can call to book your child’s assessment at 780.604.0684 to identify specific needs you and your child wish addressed.

Once an assessment is completed, payment can be made in person or through our managing system. You will receive a detailed receipt which can be used to submit to your extended health care provider benefit provider for possible reimbursement.

If there is no extended health care coverage, fees for all psychological services, including assessments, can be claimed under tax deductible health services on your income tax return.