Evaluation

At Beaumont Hospital's Center for Human Development we're committed to an interdisciplinary approach to determine a child's developmental strengths and weaknesses. The perspectives of psychology and neurodevelopmental pediatrics are melded to determine recurrent themes of strengths and disfunction in order to develop recommendations which help the child maximize his or her learning potential. Input from parents and school personnel who are familiar with the child is critical. We use interview and questionnaire tools to obtain important information about the child from key sources.

Our goal for this approach is to carefully assess behaviors and development to help determine how to maximize a child's strengths and functional patterns of behavior, and to provide strategies and recommendations to minimize the impact of weaknesses and disabilities. This method tends to have a positive impact on the child rather than simply detailing a list of deficits identified as"abnormalities."

Components of Beaumont's Comprehensive Evaluation

First, we interview the parents in order to build an information base about the child. This intake interview provides the time to review questionnaire data, history, and parent concerns. From this information we determine the type of evaluation necessary to answer the questions which have been raised. (For example, it might be appropriate for the child to see the developmental-behavioral pediatrician and a psychologist in one instance or the developmental-behavioral pediatrician, psychologist and child psychiatrist in another.)

Our psychiatric evaluation attempts to carefully describe the quality of the communication between the child and his or her environment. These dealings clearly have an enormous impact upon the child's self esteem. It is also critical during this evaluation to rule out possible depression, thought disorders, or other significant psychiatric disturbance.

Psychologists at Beaumont use observation and standardized cognitive techniques to assess verbal and non-verbal function and problem-solving.

Beaumont's educational evaluation assesses the child's processing of academic tasks and attempts to identify places where breakdowns in processing occur.

The neurodevelopmental examination also seeks to assess processing by systematically looking at the major neurodevelopmental functional areas: gross motor function, fine motor function, temporal-sequential organization, language, visual processing, visual-fine motor integration, selective attention, strategy use, and emotional adjustment. The purpose of this examination is to see how well a child can perform various tasks and to analyze how the child performs the tasks.

Through the evaluation, we are interested in determining:

• the child's quality of performance
• the child's approach to problems
• the child's ability to develop strategies
• the child's capacity to deal with frustration and fatigue

After an evaluation is completed, two of the professional staff who evaluated the child meet together to review all data collected and generated during the evaluation process. From this data, we develop a diagnostic assessment, summary of impressions, and recommendations for intervention strategies. When appropriate, and with the approval of the parents, school personnel are asked to present their view of the child's performance.

One of the professionals who assessed the child presents the findings of the evaluation team to the child's parents or guardian. This provides an opportunity to review the data, impressions, and recommendations of the evaluation and answer questions. It also provides an opportunity for parents to give feedback to the professional staff about the degree to which the evaluation captures the critical issues and addresses them in ways which are meaningful.

At Beaumont's Center for Human Development it is our hope that description of the child's strengths and weaknesses will assist the child to be more successful in school and ultimately in life and also provide a blue print for the family as they seek to incorporate helpful interventions into the child's educational program.