Help needed - Dyslexia assessment

[coates]

Hi I need to get my 12yr old son assessed for Dyslexia, but i'm not sure where to start.Can anyone help, please !!!!!!

[Domitianus]

Surely your school MUST be able to arrange an assessment by an educational psychologist????

[sophiesofa]

Maybe ask at his school? Might be worth changing the title of your thread so people know what it's about and moving it to the right section of the forum. Good luck with your son. I'm dyslexic and I think I'm alright!

[legalbeagle]

Try Sunshine House run by Southwark Council (you can google them). They certainly assess some developmental issues, so they may be able to help. I think that you need a referral from a GP, though that shouldn't be an issue.

[????]

As CharlieC might point out

GOOGLE

[Carrie]

The Bloomfield Learning Centre do assessments - up near London Bridge

[????]

The BDA....on my link

[tomk]

You could do it privately - as pointed out. But better to contact the SENCO (Spec edu needs coordinator) at the school. It's a pretty common procedure which you don't have to pay for.

[coates]

-- moved topic --

[Ann]

I agree you shouldn't have to pay. These sort of assessments can easily be upwards of ?300. It worries me that you're in this situation with a 12 year old. Should it not have been picked up at primary school?

Wherever he is at school there will be a Special Educational Needs coordinator. Please get some professional advice before spending your money.

Good luck

Ann

[alice]

its probably entirely coincidental but if you pay for a private assessment it invariably comes up with 'dyslexic learning style' and very often a high non-verbal IQ. I'd stick with the schools/ southwarks SEN team.

[womanofdulwich]

ALice that is soooo interesting- who to believe?

[KalamityKel]

Not meaning to sound insensitive but is there a particular reason why you need to have your child assessed? Surely if there is a problem highlighted by someone they would have suggested what to do?

[teresa]

hi try special educational needs section on tele 02075252916 but they well need all the doctors that are involved with the child the assesment should be done from the school my son is adh and when he was in primary school they where the ones that got the doctors involved.good luck teresa

[Ruth_Baldock]

You have two options:

1) Contact your son's school's SENCO and SEN Department for some kind of guidance. They may very well be able to arrange a test, which would involve an EP (educational psychologist) and some written tests, but it may take a few weeks to sort out.

2) Arrange for it to be done privately, at your own expense.

You could also call up Sunshine House (http://www.southwark.gov.uk/YourServices/childrenandfamilies/ChildrenandFamilyCare/sunshinehouse.html) for some advice, too.

Personally, I'd go with the first option- if it's all arranged by the school, you'll cut out a LOT of faffing about with regards to setting up an IEP/ Statement of SEN in the long term. If you have it done independently, you'll probably end up having to chase various people at his school with his test results which can be stressful and taxing for all involved.

I am not surprised at all that any difficulties he may have were not picked up in Primary School! I worked as an SEN Teacher/ Learning and Behavior mentor for several years and any 'problems' were usually picked up in years 7-9 of secondary school, but were completely missed at Primary level. Odd.

Good luck!

[espelli]

I would also recommend you contact the school SENCo. The few weeks wait mentioned in the post above seems rather optimistic in my experience. Recently in a neighbouring local authority the wait for assessment by an Educational Psychologist was over a year. Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD) Teams are usually equally overstretched and so expect schools to provide a lot of the intervention work themselves before any testing or diagnosis. This is also sometimes why problems do not seem to be "picked up" at primary level.

[sillywoman]

Getting a dyslexia assessment via a state school is a notoriously difficult process, there's some great advice already been given on here & I don't really have anything concrete to add. I just wanted to point out to those who seem to be suggesting that it's a commonly done by the school SENCO, or that it would be effectively tackled by whoever spotted the problem that in most instances I'm aware of this really isn't the case.

Our son was finally assessed for it at age 11, 8 years after we first raised concerns. He was registered as SN for the whole of his school career, but the current system seems to be so averse to 'labeling' the child that despite years of increasingly desperate requests from us it wasn't done via the school or SENCO system. They were experts at prevarication, bringing in Ed Psyc's and all sorts of other experts, but never actually assessing him specifically for dyslexia. In the end we went to the Bloomfield on the recommendation of some other parents & got a private assessment done which we then took back to the school for the SENCO to work from. A complete farce and utter let down from the school system. Sadly, from talking to other parents of SN children, our story seems to be the norm rather than the exception. Never assume that the SEN system will work for the good of your child. Certainly in our case the opposite proved true & we had to fight very hard indeed to get him what he needed for the whole 7 years of his primary education.

[teresa]

yes i agee with what you are saying if he is in secundary school it is a big battle. good luck teresa

[catma]

Dyslexia assessment really needs to be done by a trained assessor - school sencos are teachers who take on the role of coordinating SEN, the clue being in the title "Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator" - it doesn't mean they are specialists in every condition any child might present with and qualified to do every type of screening!

The Rose review of Dyslexia last year recommended that there should be a larger number of specialist trained dyslexia teachers and training is currently being provided for teachers to support this role in schools.

If your school has access to an assessor they may well be able to do it in house but you may find you will have to go beyond the school.

[sillywoman]

I agree catma, of course. I don't even need your helpful clue, to get your point & agree with you. But I do think SENCO's should be a bit more willing to refer kids on for proper assessment. In my experience the battle lies in getting schools/ SENCO's to do this. That's why so many parents end up either having to pay for a private assessment, or giving up - in which case the kids don't get the help that they need.

[espelli]

Sillywoman, I completely agree that referral should be made for assessment as soon as possible and believe me the vast majority of SENCo's would too. However as I tried to explain in my previous post a referral may be made and take a year or more before anyone sees the child, let alone assesses them. Schools are asked to provide their own evidence to show what additional support they have given and the impact (or lack of) that this has made on the child's learning before an assessment will be done. This all takes time.

Headteachers and SENCo's have been told by certain Local Authorities that they are referring too many children and it is not possible that this many children have SEN. At the last school I worked at we referred so many children for SEN that the Speech and Language therapists came in to "train" us to properly spot children who were having language difficulties as we were referring too many. Budgets are tight and if a child is diagnosed with an additional need Local Authorities have a legal obligation to meet that need. A cynical person may say that is why the bottle-necks exist in the system.

Given that Dyslexia can only really be reliably diagnosed from KS2 onwards that gives primary schools 4 years at most to get a diagnosis before the child goes on to secondary. Some schools buy in assessors and do it in house - but this money comes from the SEN budget and it is a luxury few schools can afford. The rest of the schools need to go through the process above which can take time.

I am not doubting that with the SENCo acting effectively as a gatekeeper to assessments, diagnosis and support it is difficult to see why there is reluctance to act, and of course some SENCo's are more pro-active than others but I think they have a very difficult job to do and it is not always their reluctance to act that is the problem.

[sillywoman]

No, I agree espelli, & I never really thought is was the SENCO's reluctance, rather - as you describe - the appalling, finance led, system which means that many kids are unable to get accurate assessment of their SEN needs despite the repeated requests of those who know them best. Consequently their parents, carers & educators aren't able to ensure they target the help they give so the child can gain maximum benefit from it. Hence, our experience with our son, who was widely acknowledged by both us and his educators as having dyspraxia & possible dyslexia from reception, only being accurately diagnosed as dyslexic in year 5, & by a privately paid for assessment.

Really I just wanted to make the point that it's rarely just a case of if a child has dyslexia the SENCO will arrange an assessment so don't worry about it. The system really doesn't work that way.

I was tempted to leave the last two words off the end of that last sentence.

I think in essence we're agreeing espelli.

[whisteria]

My son is at Primary School (Goodrich) and has already been assessed (he is 8 now). We were lucky. The school has a dyslexia specialist on site. His final assessment and report was completed by an educational psychologist who is responsible for dyslexia strategy in Southwark. Her name is Linda Austin. She would be worth contacting via the Southwark website.

ps. have a look at http://www.listening-books.org.uk/ for audio books that will support his learning and vocabulary at school.

[woofmarkthedog]

PM,d you