Educational psychology: advice for parents

The Schools and Community Psychology service (SCPS) consists of:

  • Educational psychologists
  • Trainee educational psychologists
  • Clinical psychologist
  • Clinical practitioners

The SCPS is a council based Educational Psychology service that offers traded services to local schools and other services as well as a statutory service to children and young people that live in Wandsworth.

If your child attends a Wandsworth maintained school or a Wandsworth academy, that commissions our service, the school will have a link educational psychologist (EP).

We currently do not have the resources to provide direct case work service to schools in the independent sector. However, we can receive commissions from independent schools for whole school wellbeing and strategic work, such as staff supervision.

If you have concerns about your child

If you have concerns about your child's progress at school or nursery, you will need to discuss this first with their teacher/s or the school SENCO. Only after they have tried to improve things with their own planning and your help, will they ask other professionals, like an educational psychologist, to become involved. You can ask the school if they think there is a need for an educational psychologist's help and whether they have links with our service.

We do not take referrals directly from parents, although we are happy to talk through the issues on the phone if you have ongoing concerns after discussing those with the school.

What happens when a concern is raised

If a concern is raised with the Schools and Community Psychology Service about your child in school and you have consented for our involvement, we will usually arrange a meeting between you, your child's school and an educational psychologist (EP) to find out about your child's progress and areas of strength and need.

During the meeting our educational psychologist will ask you and other significant adults about your child's development and listen to any concerns you have. They will then help to make plans to help your child's progress; this is likely to include things that may be done at home and at school to help your child.

At the end of the meeting, you will agree how and when your child's progress will be reviewed.

With agreement our educational psychologist may:

  • Observe your child in the class or playground
  • Meet your child to look at their schoolwork and listen to their views
  • Work with your child on assessment tasks to explore strengths and needs in the child's understanding and cognitive skills
  • Discuss concerns with other involved agencies: for example, a speech and language therapist, occupational therapist etc.

Wandsworth Educational Psychologists work in a number of different ways, and testing your child may not always be necessary. We work through a consultation model, where we build up a better understanding of the situation through talking to you, teachers and other involved professionals. We will only observe your child and/ or work with them directly if we all decide together that this is necessary to build our understanding and appropriate.

The aim of this work is to help everyone improve their understanding of the difficulties, and positive factors in a situation, and help identify the best way forward to improve the outcomes for your child.

Keeping your child informed

Your child may feel anxious and confused about meeting professionals. If it is decided that it would be helpful for an Educational Psychologist to meet your child, then every effort will be made by the Educational Psychologist to explain to your child who they are and what is going to happen.

You can discuss with school staff and the Educational Psychologist how and when your child will be informed about our involvement at the first meeting.

Equality, diversity and inclusion

The Schools and Community Psychology Service (SCPS) aims to:

  • Work in partnership with parents/carers, schools, and other professionals to ensure that all children, young people and their families are thriving, have a sense of belonging, feel safe and accepted
  • Work towards actively removing barriers experienced by marginalised and vulnerable groups

In order to achieve our aims, we are committed to equity, equality, diversity and meaningful inclusion. 

  • We recognise that in the community, discrimination occurs in relation to categories of identity including: race, social class, social and/or economic disadvantage, sex, gender, gender identity, disability, sexual orientation, age and religion
  • We believe that all individuals have equal value
  • We respect, promote and value individual differences and believe that diversity adds richness to our lives and human experience

Through the development and review of practice, policy and organisation, the SCPS is working towards ensuring that we deliver a service that is equitable, accessible and actively anti-racist and anti-discriminatory.

Find out more

To learn more about the team and how we work, speak to your school SENCo.

You can also get in touch with us directly:

Up to Schools and Community Psychology Service

Updated: 10/02/2025