This presentation will focus on meaningful feedback to families (parents, teens, older children) in the context of complex, multi-method assessments with a collaborative therapeutic assessment orientation. In particular, I will give examples of how to prioritize test findings so that the results (and report) clarify the picture- creating an effective road map to help guide families- rather than overwhelming them with too much data and too many recommendations.  Often in complex assessments with children and adolescents the assessor has cognitive, neuropsychological, academic and personality performance tests as well as input from multiple sources.  It can be challenging to bring the most significant and relevant results into clear focus. How to synthesize, integrate and prioritize can be tricky for both assessor and the family, adding to anxiety or overwhelm rather than clarifying the picture and “next steps.”

Several case vignettes will be used to illustrate situations in which parents, teachers and therapists all had some significant pieces of the puzzle about a child or teen, but there was paralysis, confusion about who was right about what, what was most important, competing narratives and intense anxiety that made it difficult to bring the picture- and the young person’s experience- into clear focus.  Prioritizing the assessment questions and goals, and determining the most salient test results, helped to bring order and clarity to the picture. This approach also pointed parents in the right directions and prioritized interventions, meaning test results served the purpose of creating effective “sign posts” in the road map.  

Presenter: Diane Santas, PhD