Meeting an EP,
for parents

Educational Psychologists have psychology degrees, experience working with children and young people and then a further qualification.  The training route changed in the late 2000s which is why some EPs are Drs and some are not.  Being a teacher is no longer a requirement but all of us at Hive EPA are trained teachers.

We all love working with children and young people and want everyone to get a chance at education.  We are also all working parents and so understand the ups and downs of family life while juggling everything else, we’ll try not to judge you if you try not to judge us!  We have over 60 years of EP experience between us so try not to worry since we’ve worked with hundreds of children and families.

We are asked to work with a wide range of children and young people and our expectation is that you will be familiar with why we’ve been asked to work with your child. Schools generally ask for us to be involved as they want to make things better for your child and often want some more ideas, however, they are not obligated to follow our advice.

You will need to give written permission for us to work with your child by signing one of our Request for Involvement forms (RFIs).  During the secondary school years most young people become Gillick competent which means they can decide for themselves, but we would always ask for your permission alongside this if at all possible.

The way we work with your child is on a case by case basis, we don’t always do the same thing, it depends on the question/query that we’ve been asked to explore.

There are times when we:

• work with staff to try and find ways forward
• work with you and staff to try and find ways forward
• meet with you and staff for additional information gathering
• observe your child
• meet your child; even though you’ve given permission, if a child does not want to meet with us we would try to encourage them but obviously would never force them

If and when we meet your child we are interested in their views about themselves, school and life in general.  We might be exploring particular issues related to learning or behaviour and have a range of assessment tools at our disposal some of which are formal and others informal.

The kind of feedback you get from us will depend on what we have done. For instance, if we have had a conversation with you or you and staff we might write some notes or a member of staff might do this; other times we write a fuller report on what we have done.  Any formal written information will be sent to the school and they will be asked to get this to you.

We work through the school so questions and queries, particularly about the next steps following our involvement, are best to be directed to them in the first instance.