A-Z of Services

The Educational Psychology Service

Information for Parents and Schools

Who are we?

The Educational Psychology Service comprises a team of seven professionally trained educational psychologists, a portage worker (early years), a Student Assistance Programme Co-ordinator and administrative and clerical support led by the Principal Educational Psychologist.

What do we do?

Psychology helps us and others to understand how children develop and learn, as well as how they may think, feel and behave.

We use psychology to:

Work with children and young people so that they can be successful with their learning, in their own schools, alongside their peers;
Work with teachers and parents / carers to identify and help overcome problems with children's learning, development or behaviour;

The Educational Psychology Service provides services for schools and for children and young people between the ages of 0-19 years.

All schools have access to an allocated educational psychologist (EP) who makes scheduled school visits. Parents can access the Service through discussion with their child's school.

If a school is concerned about an individual child, staff will work with parents in a variety of ways to support the pupil. This is called 'School Action', in the Government publication: 'Special Educational Needs Code of Practice for Wales' (external link), published in 2002.

If the concerns about a child are not resolved the school will ask to involve the EP more directly, with the agreement of parents. (This is called 'School Action Plus'). Regular progress reviews with parents and all concerned are held.

How do we work

We use a variety of approaches:

Having discussions and gathering information with pupils, parents and teachers to help solve problems;
Direct work with pupils and with their teachers within the classroom;
Working with schools to track the progress of pupils or groups of pupils; this might include work with individuals, groups, classes or whole school approaches e.g. developing a school programme to help with reading or helping to solve behaviour problems during break-times and lunchtimes.