Tips for good assessment and report writing

 This is the first of a few  tips written by the assessment  team at the Jerusalem municipality educational psychology services.   The members of the team are:  Rita   Baumgarten, Hanna Brimer, Nadine Caplan , Eynat  Cohen Rahman , Etti Daniel Simon , Uri Dar ,  Michelle Lisses Topaz, Betty Netzer, Ruth Oman Shaked , Adina Sacknovitz , Smadar Sapir Yogev, Anan Srour   and  Dahlia Zayit.

Try to understand the child's, the family's and the school's story, and define a specific assessment question.

The referral clarification process and the interview with the child, the parents and the school staff are psychological interventions.  Asking the questions is an intervention process.  The school staff, the parents and the child  - each have their own theories about the sources of the child's difficulties.  It's important to know these theories and to integrate them in the overall conceptualization of the "case". 

The referral clarification process and the interview are opportunities to understand  the school staff's  story about the child, the school system and the child's place in it.  The attempt to understand the story will in itself create and/or enrich the school's story.  As part of the school's story, it's important to understand, in accordance with the RTI model, the interventions the school has already attempted with the child and their results. 

The referral clarification process and the interview are opportunities to understand and to think with the parents about their story of the child, his developmental history and their family history, their family system and the child's place in it. 

These are opportunities to understand and to think with the child about his story of himself, the way he sees the school and the family systems and his place in them.  These are also opportunities to gather information from other sources (medical, paramedical) and to see if the child has visual or auditory sensory disabilities.     

If, after the referral clarification process and the interviews, you've decided with the family, the child and the school staff that the best intervention would be psychological assessment, try to define the assessment question or questions with the child, the family and the school staff.  Try to formulate a clear, specific question or clear, specific questions.  Such questions will help you focus the assessment process and plan it so that it will result in answers to these questions.  Try to avoid working automatically, with a standard test battery.  Ask yourself: what will be surprising for me to find out?