Developmental Assessments:
A comprehensive understanding of your infant, toddler or pre-schooler
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We know that children grow at different rates. Different children develop different skills at different times, and whilst there are general guidelines for the development of different skills, such as walking, talking or toileting, there are no set deadlines for your little one.
There may be times when you do have concerns about your child’s ability to meet expected milestones, or their ability to perform everyday tasks. Here, a developmental assessment may be appropriate. Our developmental assessments have been expertly developed to measure and report the developmental functioning of your young child. These assessments are specifically for infants, toddlers and pre-schoolers and can help to identify possible developmental delays, inform professionals about specific areas of strengths or weaknesses, and provide a method of monitoring your child’s developmental progress. These assessments can also form part of the evidence required for an application for an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP).
We know that early identification through our developmental assessments can allows for timely interventions, which can significantly improve outcomes for children by addressing their unique needs and supporting their growth and development.
What happens in an assessment?
Our developmental assessments include very thorough discussions about your child’s development, family history and your concerns. We will get out all our toys and games, and allow your child to explore the many engaging items and challenging puzzles. This is not just playing with cars and teddies. We will make some very specific observations, encourage your child to interact with certain items in certain ways, and ask them to respond to certain requests, as part of our understanding of their skills and development. We will also spend some time talking about their strengths and their weaknesses in day-to-day tasks, such as eating, toileting, moving around, using crayons, and their imagination. If they are at a childminders, nursery or pre-school, we will liaise with them to obtain some further information, and we will review any correspondence about your child or previous assessments that they’ve completed.
Following this very comprehensive assessment, we will review the report together, examining the results, conclusions and recommendations, and we will have the opportunity to discuss the outcomes and next steps together.
Who can we assess?
We can offer a developmental assessment for babies from 16 weeks to pre-schoolers aged 4. If your child is older, our cognitive assessments may be more appropriate. However, our developmental assessments are also appropriate for older children with significant developmental delays, learning disabilities, or multiple or severe disabilities.
What does a developmental assessment involve?
We are proud to offer an exceptionally high quality assessment, using the most up-to-date technology and ‘gold-standard’ measures. We strongly believe in offering the most comprehensive and objective assessment.
A developmental assessment is a thorough combination of discussions, observations, questionnaires, games and play. We work hard to ensure that the assessment includes all the relevant information to ensure the outcome is the right one for your child.
1.
Initial Discussions
Our assessment begins with a very thorough developmental history. We will think about your child’s family and their experience of growing up, even if it is just a couple of months. We will talk about their time with a childminder, or at nursery or preschool, and how they have progressed from when they were born through to the present day. We will discuss their developmental milestones, ability to interact with other children, any behavioural concerns that you may have and their emotional wellbeing,. We will have an opportunity to hear your views about their day-to-day life.
2.
Our Gold-Standard Assessment
We will meet together over approximately 2 hours, not necessarily all in one go! We will play games, make observations, and interact with your child to understand their:
Cognitive abilities: This will help to understand how your child thinks, reacts, and learns about the world around them. Your child will be given tasks that measure their interest in new things, their attention to familiar and unfamiliar objects, and how they play with different kinds of toys. Your child will also be given items that examine how they explore new toys and experiences, how they solve problems, and their ability to complete puzzles. Your child may also be given items that measure their pretend play and activities such as building with blocks, colour matching, counting, and solving more complex puzzles.
Language abilities: The language assessment is split into two parts: Receptive Communication (how well your child recognizes sounds and how much they understand spoken words and directions), and Expressive Communication (how well your child communicates using sounds, gestures, or words).
Your child will be given items that measure their recognition of sounds, objects, and people in the environment. They will be given items that ask them to identify pictures and objects, follow simple directions, and perform social routines such as wave ‘bye-bye’ or play ‘peek-a-boo’. Your child may be asked to follow more complex directions, identify action pictures, and given items that measure their understanding of basic grammar. They will be observed throughout the assessment for various forms of non-verbal expressions such as smiling, jabbering expressively, and laughing. Your child will be given opportunities to use words by naming objects or pictures and answering questions. They may also be given the opportunity to use words and to answer more complex questions.
Motor abilities: The motor assessment is also split into two parts: Fine Motor (how well your child can use their hands and fingers to make things happen) and Gross Motor (how well your child can move their body).
Your child will be assessed for muscle control such as following movement with their eyes, bringing a hand to their mouth, and reaching and/or grasping an object. Your child will be given the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to perform tasks such as stacking blocks, drawing simple shapes, and placing small objects, such as coins in a slot. Your child may also be asked to draw more complex shapes and build simple structures using blocks. Your child will be assessed for their performance on movement activities and may be given a chance to demonstrate their ability to climb stairs, run, maintain balance, kick a ball, and other activities requiring full body control or coordination.
We are very proud to offer an exceptionally engaging approach for your child, with lots of flexibility, adapting our assessment to your child (such playing on the floor, at the table, on your lap, or in the garden), and ensuring your child feels safe and happy during the assessment.
3.
Adaptive Skills, Psychological Wellbeing and Other Reports
As part of our assessment, we will consider your child’s day-to-day functional skills (such as communicating, eating, toileting, and moving around the house). We will ensure that your child’s psychological wellbeing is understood. If you have any reports written by educational psychologists, teachers, or other professionals, or your child has completed assessments elsewhere, we will be able to review the reports to better understand what other professionals have concluded.
It is also really useful for us to liaise with your child’s childminder, nursery or pre-school so that we can hear their perspective of your child’s development, learning, progress, social interactions and ability to manage the demands of the world around them.
4.
Feedback and Report
Approximately one-week later, we will be able to review the results and the report together. We will discuss all aspects of your child’s assessment, including our conclusions and recommendations. We recommend that this appointment is completed without your child, but this is entirely your choice.
A written report will be provided, detailing all aspects of the assessment and results, including a wider understanding of what is going on for your child, and recommendations most appropriate for your child. There will also be an opportunity to request any amendments to the report.
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