What does a parent need to know about assessment?
Assessment for an Early Intervention Service should evaluate children on their capabilities, not deficits, and analyze how children manage in relation to their family, community and culture. A developmental assessment tries to analyze the child’s competencies and resources. It determines the parents and professionals to look for the best available opportunities to help a child to make the best use of his or her developmental potential.
Parents:
- You are the parent. That is your expertise and you know your child better than anyone else. Your feelings and personal observations matter. You are the parent. And you can rely on yourself and if you need help make use of the professional’s expertise as it applies.
- You don’t need to learn it all by yourself. The expert’s task is to explain in your terms so that you know that what is going on with your child is fine and will be understood by everyone.
- You may disagree. If professionals see your child in a differently way than you, ask for discussion. Accepting an assessment that in your opinion does not portray your child will be of no use to you.
- Bring someone with you to meetings. You might feel overwhelmed, and teams have to accept that you bring a friend or family member with you for support. The support person can help take notes, keep track of information and review the discussion with you later.
- Understand that your not always have to be involved in the same way. Children change, also your child, you do and also all kind of circumstances does. Your can decide to become more or less involved and that should be accepted. But also the professionals may change your involvement. They have to inform you and the decision is up to you. But it should be clear that you are to be alerted if something changes.
- Make sure your needs are met. Programs and activities that miss what you are concerned about don’t give you the chance to take part as you want. Make your needs clear, even if this means finding others specialist that those with whom you work.
- Find support for yourself. Take care of yourself and your family.
- Share your knowledge and your experience with others. Parents who need to learn what you have already discovered need your help. Share what you have learned.
- Trust your parental common sense/intuition. If necessary, ask for a second opinion.
There also some general routines that help an accurate assessment:
- Young children should never be separated during the assessment from their parents. You can’t expect young children to perform tests well when they are anxious about being separated from their parents.
- Young children should never be assessed by someone they don’t know. You can’t take tests when you just have just met minutes earlier. At least you should have played with them, if possible eat together with them and the parents, or drink a glass of lemonade with a cookie
- Formal tests or tools should never be the main topic of the assessment of an infant or young child. Most standardized tests are not designed to bring out the unique abilities of children, but their deficits. Structured tests should be only one part of an integrated approach. Assessments limited to areas that are easily measurable should not be considered complete. Measures of motor or cognitive skills do not give an accurate picture of the child’s total developmental capabilities. A complete assessment should involve parent’s experience with a child and include independent observations of a child’s interaction with the parent.
