Assessment
Psycho-educational assessments
Comprehensive psycho-educational assessments are conducted to assess your child’s learning strengths and challenges. These assessments often measure cognitive, behavioural, emotional, and academic functioning using a variety of psychological tests and procedures. Below, you can look through the different areas we assess, and what we look to gather from them. From there, if you want to get started with our team today, fill out the form below.
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Areas typically assessed include (but are not limited to):
Cognitive abilities (thinking and reasoning skills)
Problem solving and conceptualization
Executive functioning (e.g., planning and organization)
Attention and memory
Language skills
Academic skills
Perceptual and fine motor abilities
Personality
Social-emotional functioning
Behaviour
Adaptive functioning (life skills)
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The goals of an assessment may be to:
Better understand your child or adolescent’s learning strengths and challenges
Provide practical suggestions to optimize your child or adolescent’s functioning within home, school and other settings
Provide tailored recommendations and to schools regarding appropriate school supports and placement
Inform consultation with key professionals in your child or teen’s life (e.g., liaising with teachers or other providers to implement recommendations)
Possible Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
Some children and adolescents struggle with one or more of the following: paying attention, regulating their bodies, and acting without thinking. Children and adolescents with possible ADHD may struggle in situations where their attention is required to be on something that is not highly interesting to them. They may make ‘silly mistakes’ or fail to hear instructions at school. Managing and keeping track of their things may be a challenge. And some children or teens with a particular type of ADHD may act as if they are ‘driven by a motor’ - constantly moving and having difficulty sitting still.
Understanding whether ADHD may explain some of your child or teen’s struggles can inform interventions and supports that can lead to improvements in school performance, social functioning, and can make things easier at home.
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At Cornerstone we offer ADHD assessments for children and teens that involve interviews and standardized questionnaires to parents, review of report cards and questionnaires to teachers, and interview/observation of the young person.
We provide recommendations about how to support attention, behaviour, and executive functioning (organizational abilities like planning, managing one’s time, keeping track of belongings, emotional regulation and study skills).
Possible Autism Spectrum Disorder
*Short wait times for assessments with children under age 6
Autism is a form of neurodivergence. It is a label given when individuals present with 1) social communication difficulties and 2) restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviours, interests, or activities that significantly impact their day-to-day living. Although symptoms show up early on in the developmental period (i.e., as early as 2 years old), some individuals only experience challenges as they enter school and socialization demands increase.
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Some signs may include
Little eye contact
Very intense interests (e.g., watching the same youtube clip over and over again) or interested in things that are not typical for the child’s age (e.g., interest in toilets, lights)
Repeating words or phrases (echolalia)
Repetitive behaviours, such as spinning
Intense reactions to minor changes in routine or surroundings
Appearing uninterested in other children
Difficulties communicating own needs either using words or gestures
For additional signs and symptoms: Canadian Paediatric Society & Autism Canada
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For many parents, seeing many of their child’s behaviours fit on these lists can be a very stressful experience. If this is the case for you, it would be helpful to first check in with your family doctor regarding your concerns as many of these symptoms share overlaps with other conditions. Your doctor will be the best person to talk to regarding whether an autism (or other) assessment is worth pursuing. Remember that a diagnosis is a label for certain patterns of behaviour and that a label does not change who your child is.
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In British Columbia, the diagnostic process requires that the diagnosis of autism be completed by a registered psychologist, paediatrician or psychiatrist. Different types of assessments are required if your child is under the age of 6 or if they are above the age of 6.
Autism Assessments (age 5 or younger)
*Short wait times for assessments with children under age 6
In order to receive autism funding in British Columbia for children under 6, an autism assessment must comprise of a pediatrician’s report, a speech language assessment, and psychological assessment consisting of cognitive testing and autism testing. This can be challenging for families to try to source these assessments on their own. To better support families, we are pleased to offer a one-stop assessment where speech language, cognitive, and autism testing are all completed during one in-person session. To be eligible for this service, families must have the pediatrician’s report ready at the time of the assessment.
What to expect in a combined Autism assessment:
One virtual intake: For most autism assessments, your psychologist will complete the parent interview portions (i.e., clinical interview and ADI-R) virtually on a separate day as it can be hard to find childcare and many prefer to complete this in the comfort of their own home.
Single day in-person assessment: A speech and language assessment, cognitive testing, autism testing and feedback will all be completed during one in-person appointment. A clinical day is typically scheduled for 6 hours and on weekends to make it easier for families to come.
Timely diagnoses and feedback: Research shows that children who obtain an early diagnosis and early intervention obtain optimal outcomes. With majority of these assessments, we will provide families with the diagnostic outcome on the same day as in-person testing. In exceptional cases (i.e., requirement for additional testing or information from other sources), feedback is completed as soon as possible in order to not delay access to intervention.
Comprehensive and easy-to-read report: We will write a combined, comprehensive and meaningful report that parents can use to access appropriate school services and other interventions.
For more information about these assessments, please visit https://drhildaho.com/autism-assessments/autism-assessments-age-5-or-younger/.
Autism Assessments (age 6 or older)
An autism assessment for children above the age of 6 (also called a clinical diagnostic assessment (CDA)) involves the following components as outlined by the B.C diagnostic standards:
File review of medical and school documents (e.g., school report cards, assessments from other health providers if applicable)
Clinical intake with parents/caregivers: A semi-structured interview will be conducted with the child’s main caregivers in order to collect information about the child’s birth and developmental history (e.g., age when they took their first steps, age when they spoke their first words) as well as relevant educational and medical information.
Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R): A semi-structured interview will be conducted with the child’s main caregivers. The purpose of this interview is to assess for features of autism that occurred early on in the child’s development (i.e., ages 4-5) and current day.
Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule – Second Ed. (ADOS-2): This is a play-based semi-structured assessment with your child. The purpose of this assessment is to examine their social communication and interaction and to assess for the presence of restricted/repetitive behaviours.