How can a clinical psychologist help your child with SEN?

Clinical psychologists are interested in difficulties that children present that appear to be related to their life in general rather than specifically at school. So if a problem existed outside of school, or there was a strong feeling that the difficulties they were having were related to more global issues, then that would be where a clinical psychologist could help.

We would also want to talk to the people around the child who know them well - usually parents or carers - and we would contact schools to hear about how the child is doing there. It's all about helping us build up a picture of that child, what the difficulties are and where and how they present themselves.

Once we have a good understanding of what we think is going on, we can begin to think about the kind of treatment that needs to happen. This could be either:

• Individually with the child – the clinical psychologist meeting on a one-to-one basis with the child, doing some therapy with drawing, playing or talking.
• Involving other people – maybe sessions with families together or involving other people as well in doing what we call systemic (group) sessions looking at the whole system.

Based on what the assessment tells us we think about what interventions we might offer.