What the educational psychology team do

The Portsmouth Educational Psychology Team is part of the Inclusion Service. We work with children and young people from birth to age 25 in mainstream and special schools, nurseries, and colleges. We use our psychological expertise to create positive changes for them.

We support all areas of their development, helping them reach their full potential through psychology.

Our mission is: using Psychology to listen to, learn with and support growth and change in children, families and their educational communities.

• we carry out assessments of children and young people’s strengths and needs
• we offer consultation, joint problem-solving meetings with the adults who know the child or young person best
• we provide training and supervision for SENCOs, teachers, teaching assistants and others
• we do project work across the city, such as our Emotional Literacy Support Assistant project and our work with the Neurodiversity team
• we contribute to Education, Health and Care Needs Assessments
• we work with children and young people directly as well as their parents and carers, teachers and support staff and with other agencies

We help to remove barriers to achievement for all children and young people, particularly those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and/or from vulnerable groups.

We use our training in psychology and knowledge of child development to assess strengths and difficulties children may be experiencing at school and provide advice and training on how schools might help children to learn and develop.

We keep up to date with best practice, policy and research to make sure this informs local practices and policies.  We may sometimes be involved in and advise local authority groups to help improve the support available.  We currently provide input into the Local Authority’s social emotional and mental health, literacy and neurodiversity strategies.

Our person-centred approach

We adopt a person-centred approach. This means we involve children and young people, and their parents/carers in decision-making. We will use different techniques and meetings to help them express their views, hopes and fears, and their dreams. We will also help children and young people to understand the different options available to them so that they can make informed decisions.

We are governed by the British Psychological Society’s Code of Ethics. Our educational psychologists are also all registered and regulated by the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC). Our work is underpinned by both organisations’ standards of conduct, performance and ethics. We often have trainee educational psychologists and psychologists who are in the process of registering with the HCPC working with us.