Empathetic & Collaborative Care
Seeking support from a psychologist can be an important step towards understanding yourself and navigating life’s challenges. Therapy provides a safe, confidential, and non-judgemental space to explore thoughts, emotions, and behaviours, while developing practical strategies to support wellbeing and meaningful change.
Our Clinical Psychologist works collaboratively with our psychiatrists to deliver integrated, person-centred care using empirically supported therapeutic approaches that include:
These interventions are tailored to each individual's needs and are designed to promote emotional resilience, enhance adaptive coping strategies, facilitate meaningful behavioural change, and improve overall psychological wellbeing.
Psychometric Assessments
Deciding whether to pursue a psycho-educational assessment can feel like a big step, and many parents wonder if it's the right time. A helpful starting point is to look at the pattern of challenges your child is experiencing, rather than any one symptom alone. Common signs include:
- Persistent difficulty with reading, writing, or math despite consistent effort and support
- Trouble following multi-step directions, staying organized, or managing time
- Attention that's hard to sustain, or restlessness that makes it difficult to settle into tasks
- Noticeable frustration, anxiety, or avoidance when it comes to schoolwork
- Performance that seems inconsistent or doesn't match the effort being put in
- Slower processing speed, or needing much more time than peers to complete work
- Challenges with social interactions or picking up on social cues
- Delays in speech, language, or motor development
A psycho-educational assessment is a comprehensive evaluation that looks at how your child thinks, learns, and processes information. Conducted by a psychologist, it combines cognitive testing, academic testing, and observations of behavior and emotional wellbeing to build a full picture of your child's strengths and challenges. It can also identify strengths to build on, not just areas of difficulty. If you're noticing several of these signs and want clarity on the best path forward, our team is here to help guide that decision.
Autism Assessment
An autism assessment looks specifically at social communication, interaction patterns, and behaviour often alongside a broader psycho-educational assessment when learning concerns are also present. Signs that may prompt parents to consider an autism assessment include difficulty with back-and-forth conversation or understanding social cues, strong preferences for routine and distress when routines change, intense or narrow interests, sensory sensitivities to sound, texture, light, etc., repetitive movements or behaviours, and challenges with flexible or imaginative play. As with learning concerns, it's the pattern and impact on daily life not any single trait that matters most.
If these difficulties are showing up across different settings — at home, at school, and in social situations — and haven't improved with typical support, an assessment can offer valuable insight into how your child learns, thinks, and processes information.
FAQ about psychometric assessments
A psycho-educational assessment is a comprehensive evaluation that looks at how a child thinks, learns, and processes information. It combines cognitive testing, academic testing, and behavioural or emotional observations to build a full picture of a child's strengths and challenges.
Every child develops differently, and occasional struggles are a normal part of learning. An assessment may be worth considering when difficulties are persistent, appear across multiple settings (home, school, social situations), and haven't improved with typical support. Some signs to watch for include:
- Ongoing difficulty with reading, writing, or math despite consistent effort and extra help
- Trouble following multi-step instructions, staying organized, or managing time
- Attention that's hard to sustain, or restlessness that makes it difficult to settle into tasks
- Noticeable frustration, anxiety, or avoidance around schoolwork
- Performance that seems inconsistent or doesn't match the effort being put in
- Slower processing speed, or needing much more time than peers to complete tasks
- Difficulty with social interactions or reading social cues
- Delays in speech, language, or motor development
An autism assessment focuses specifically on social communication and interaction, behavior patterns, and sensory processing. It's often considered alongside a psycho-educational assessment, especially when a child shows both learning-related and social/behavioral differences. Signs that may prompt parents to consider this type of assessment include:
- Difficulty with back-and-forth conversation, or challenges understanding social cues and unwritten social rules
- A strong preference for routine, and noticeable distress when routines are disrupted
- Intense or highly focused interests
- Sensory sensitivities — to sound, texture, light, touch, or taste
- Repetitive movements or behaviors (e.g., hand-flapping, rocking, lining up objects)
- Difficulty with flexible or imaginative play, or preferring to play alongside rather than with peers
Not necessarily. It's rarely one sign on its own. It is usually the combination, persistence, and impact on daily life and confidence that suggests a closer look would be helpful.
Beyond identifying areas of difficulty, an assessment highlights your child's cognitive and academic strengths. This gives a fuller picture of how they learn best, and can guide decisions about school accommodations or other support strategies.
If several of these signs sound familiar, or if teachers and caregivers have raised similar concerns, our team is happy to talk through whether an assessment is the right fit for your child and family.
Supervision
Our clinical psychologist is a board-approved supervisor offering both individual and group supervision. With over several years of experience in the public and private health system, she has extensive expertise in supervising clinicians working in mental health settings.
Her supervision approach integrates creating a reflective, supportive, and clinically rich learning environment using various therapeutic models. Supervision is tailored to support skill development, professional growth, and ethical practice, while encouraging thoughtful engagement with complex clinical work.
