Parents
Parents bring their children to us because they need help with something. That ‘something’ is different for every child and family, but one word that generally links everything we do here at Valuing Minds is “understanding”.
What’s on your mind?
Given that you’ve arrived at our site, there’s probably something that is concerning you about your child or you might be worried about something that an education or other health professional has said. You might want or need:
- Help understanding why your child’s learning or behaviour is a concern
- Support to ensure your gifted & talented child is able to reach their full potential
- Help understanding a diagnosis that another professional has made
- Reassurance that your child is “OK”
- Help identifying a problem or condition
- Teaching techniques and strategies that can help your child
- Signposting to the correct teams/services
- Support to challenge an education provider to ensure your child has the correct resources and help
- Support with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) application, review or tribunal (For more information about EHCPs, please click here.)
- An assessment for access arrangements for GCSE or A level exams
These are some of the key services that we offer – everything that we do is focussed around the child and we completely understand that often all is not that it appears to be, especially at school! We work to unravel the situation, look at the underlying issues, identify key patterns and provide help to create positive dynamic changes for the child and their family.
In some cases, this can be as simple as saying to parents “yes, your child is showing signs of specific learning difficulties or dyslexia” and then helping you to get the right support systems in place. Other cases are more complex – no two children are ever the same.
Why Parents Choose Valuing Minds
As Educational Psychologists, our job satisfaction comes from helping families find a way forward – in whatever way is best for them. Valuing Minds’ practice combines our experience in both educational and, in Nicky’s case, business psychology. For parents and families, this can mean:
- Having someone who understands both the educational and practical sides of things and can communicate them to all relevant parties
- Having someone consider all the contributory factors – be they family, medical, social, relationships, trauma or something else
- Answers – possibly to questions you didn’t realise needed answering
- Someone to fight your corner
- A more focussed journey through the education system
- A positive shift in behaviour, learning and access to resources
- Practical interventions
- An understanding and celebration of your child’s strengths
- Progress
How we work
After you’ve made contact with us, we usually arrange for an initial conversation to discover exactly what you need. This consultation is carried out at no charge and enables us to plan a way forward with you
The easiest way to make contact with us is via this form
From the initial conversation the process is then usually:
- A meeting with the parent(s)/carer(s)
- A conversation with the child or young person and, often, an assessment of their strengths and development needs
- A meeting with key individuals at the student’s school or college (or nursery if the child is a pre-schooler)
- The creation of a detailed letter or report that contains both our findings and recommendations
- Follow up meeting with parent(s)/carer(s) and/or teachers
The Valuing Minds Process
This the framework that we use for all work at Valuing Minds
We’ll find out what’s on your mind, your concerns, issues, needs and how you think we might be able to help. If we can’t help, we’ll signpost you to someone we believe can.
Following our assessments and conversations we’ll create a hypothesis and interpretation of all the information we have. This allows us to formulate a plan to implement.
We support those involved in the implementation of the plan created in the formulation step. These recommendations may include actions to be taken, training needs or similar.
This is where we look at how things are going and what will happen next. This might be naming desired outcomes or looking forward to the next steps the young person might take.
Timing and Costs
Like many other Educational Psychologists, we are busy and are often booking weeks and months ahead. If you have a time critical need, we will try and assist but cannot guarantee our availability. If we can’t, we will try and signpost you to someone who may be able to. We have a waiting list and will try and give you an indication of how long it may take for us to be able to start work.
We aim to complete the process within about 8 weeks from when we start work – this may be some time from your initial enquiry or conversation. However, there are situations where the process is delayed due to factors that we just can’t control.
The cost of the process varies depending on your requirements – we will explain this to you during our initial conversation.