Assessment
What does assessment involve?
We offer detailed, structured, multi-session assessment: this is a carefully developed, robust assessment format and is an essential part of our intervention.
We spend time meeting alone with parents/caregivers to understand the family's needs and challenges, strengths and values, history and experiences. If needed, we connect families to resources and services. Then we make a plan for how we will help your family.
We often use toys, as young children express their feelings and experiences through play. We meet with parents/carers alone and together with their child(ren). If they are old enough, we help children understand who we are, why we are meeting, and what we will do together.
We might ask you to share health, education and mental health records with us. In the assessment, we ask you to share information about your own history and your child’s experience, as well as how things are currently. We ask questions to learn about how you understand your child(ren) and your relationship with your child(ren).
Taken together, this information gives us a good understanding of you and your family, and how best we can meet your needs.
The assessment is a collaborative experience and we will discuss this with you as we work through it. A benefit of our assessment is that we record information to use with you in our sessions together: we provide a space to reflect and you can gain invaluable insights through this approach.
Who else is involved?
If it is helpful and if you would like us to, we can also link up with other key people in your family’s life, such as school/nursery, other health professionals, etc.