Psychoeducational Assessments

Cognitive Ability & Intellect:  An individual’s cognitive ability is how they gain knowledge and understanding through thoughts, experiences, and the senses.

Academic Functioning: An individual’s academic functioning is evaluated by looking at their foundational academic skills and achievement across core school subjects, such as reading, writing, and mathematics.

Social-Emotional Functioning: An individual’s social-emotional functioning includes their ability to manage their emotions and understand the feelings of others. Learning and attention-related challenges can have a significant impact on self-esteem, emotion regulation, and social skill development.

Behavioural Functioning: Challenges with self-regulation (including regulating behaviours) can make learning and day-to-day routines difficult for students. For example, some individuals struggle to stay seated throughout the day, show drifting attention, or show troubles thinking before acting.

Executive Functioning: This is the part of your brain that helps us plan and carry out tasks and goals. Areas of executive function include mental skills such as attention, organization, flexibility, and self-monitoring.

Every child’s needs and abilities are unique. Here are some signs that your child may benefit from a psychoeducational assessment:

• Your child’s grades and achievement don’t reflect his/her effort or potential

• Your child’s grades are meeting age-expectations except in one or two areas (e.g., English, Math)

• Your child asks for repetition of concepts that were already learned

• Your child struggles with procrastination or planning skills that homework or task completion

• Your child dislikes school or refuses to go to school

• Your child may cry over homework or complain about the workload

• Your child requires a high level of adult support

• Report card comments indicating that your child needs extra time and frequent check-ins to help with attention and focus

• Your child struggles with low self-esteem or regulating emotions

• Family history of Learning Disabilities or attention challenges

• Schools recommend an assessment every 2-3 years to monitor progress and update supports

• Optional free 15-minute consultation

• 1 hour interview with caregiver(s)

• 2-3 assessment sessions with child only (4-6 hours total), which includes:

  • A clinical interview

  • Observations

  • Variety of tests and rating scales used to better understand how your child learns, processes information, and functions emotionally and behaviourally

• Depending on the child’s needs, additional areas such as memory, attention, language, and motor skills may be explored

• Document review (e.g., IPPs, report cards, previous assessment reports, developmental history)

• Teacher interview

• Questionnaires/rating scales completed by parents and a teacher

• Optional classroom observation (by request and agreement with school)

• 1 hour parent feedback session to discuss assessment results recommendations

• A comprehensive report including assessment results and recommendations

Psychoeducational reports are needed to access accommodations at the post-secondary level. They can also be used to apply for Federal grants. Documents for grants must be no longer than 5 years old. Therefore, it is often beneficial to receive an updated psychoeducational assessment.

Accommodations can be initiated through Access and Inclusion Services at post-secondary institutions. You may be eligible for the following based on your diagnosis and barriers to learning:

Test Accommodations:

• Extended time (1.5 or 2x)

• Distraction reduced environment

• Assistive technology (e.g., dictation, text-to-speech, spelling/grammar check)

• Noise cancelling headphones

Classroom Accommodations:

• Access to class notes or notetaker

• Permission to record class

• Adjustment to the attendance policy

• Preferential seating

• Books in alternative format (e.g., audiobooks)

• Basic calculator

• Adjustment to group assignments and presentations

Please contact Maliya directly via email or phone to schedule your assessment!

Full Psychoeducational Assessment (Learning Disabilities, ADHD, Anxiety, Depression, Intellectual Disabilities):

• Time required: approximately 10-12 hours

• Price: $2,400- $2,880 ($240/hour)

Giftedness Assessment:

• Time required: approximately 5-6 hours

• Price: $1200- $1440 ($240/hour)

Additional Testing Time:

• Time required: 1 hour

• Price: $240

Please Note: psychologists in Alberta cannot direct bill the following insurance providers- CINUP, Cowan Insurance Group, Johnson Inc., Manulife, and Sunlife.

Almost all Extended Health Care Plans cover all or a portion of the costs for a psychologist under "psychologist services", "psychotherapy", or "counselling". Contact your insurance agent for more information on reimbursement procedures and coverage information regarding “Psychological Assessments.”