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Hello readers,
I hope you enjoyed the last issue and that you were given some new ideas and resources.
We have managed to hit mid-year when many of us find outselves over-worked and stressed. It is timely to remember the coping strategies we teach our clients, and reflect on these strategies in for managing our own self-care during the busy mid-year period.
As usual, always looking for new members and new contributers. A big thank-you to fellow psychologist Lara Silkoff who has volunterred her time to contribute her views and insignt on the WPSSI-IV as well a book that many of us will find useful.
Please email: [email protected] or if you have an article, or resource you want to share.
Kathryn Kallady – editor Alex Dawson – sub-editor
In this issue: • WPPSI-IV review and details
• Interview: Professor Nicole Rinehart - Deakin University
• Update: National School Chaplaincy Program
• Book review: Big Mind Sky
• Workshop: Developments in Behavioural, Social, and Clin-ical Assessment of Children presented by Dr Jerome Sattler
Newsletter July 2014
Get Involved! We are looking for reporters/superheroes who are willing to contribute their ideas via writing for the newsletter or to keep up to date daily: access Twitter and Linkedin.
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Two words. Ink dauber.
Yes, the WPPSI-IV comes with an ink dauber, a kids ‘grip-sized marker that delivers an orange splodge on the page when the child bangs it down on the page. The ink dauber does amazing things. First and foremost, it al-lows for an assessment of process-ing speed that is not compromised by variability in fine-motor skill acquisition. All three processing speed tests in the WPPSI-IV- Bug Search, Animal Coding and Can-cellation employ it. It also makes the whole thing familiar, engag-ing and above all, fun.
I used the WPPSI-IV on 7.5 year old Jenny *, a little girl with se-vere autism who had been previ-ously pronounced “unassessable” by a psychologist attempting to assess her with the WPPSI-III several years ago. Where the WPPSI III age- limit was 7.3, the WPPSI-IV can be used up to age 7.7, and given Jenny’s track record, I felt it was worth having a go with the WPPSI-IV rather than to try the even less-engaging WISC-IV.
It was a move that paid off well. The WPPSI–IV has a measure of Picture Memory that assesses visual memory in an age-appro-priate, game-like fashion. Fluid Reasoning and Visual- Spatial in-telligence are measured separate-ly. For Jenny, this was important
New Features to the WPSSI-IV
• 2 Working Memory measures: Picture Memory and Zoo Locations
• 3 Processing Speed measures: Bug Search, Cancellation and Animal Coding
Professional Development for
WPPSI-IVAGCA presents Twilight PD
13th August 6.30 - 8.00pm. Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne.
Newsletter Ju;y 2014
WPPSI-IV - ready to go!Lara Silkoff reflects and reviews the new WPPSI-IV
as her Visual-Spatial intelligence was within the Average range, and it was great to provide her parents with this feedback when there were so many other areas of significant deficit.
I cannot recommend the WPPSI-IV highly enough. At the end of day, “unassessable” Jenny, was “assessable” using the WPPSI-IV, and the new subtests and indices proved to be sensitive measures of her cognitive strengths and weaknesses. Jenny had a lot of fun during the assessment, and I have to admit I did as well. At $2470.00 from Pearson Clinical Australia, it is a hefty investment, but one that will pay off well in allowing engaging, sensitive and developmentally appropriate assessment of young children.
* Name is changed to protect privacy, but parental permission to use Jenny as an example in this review was granted.
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Research with Heart: Professor Nicole Rinehart If you are one to drive on the Burwood Highway in Melbourne, you may have noticed a brand new state-of-the-art building on the Deakin University landscape. It is here where Professor Nicole Rinehart and her team have established the Deakin Child Study Centre. Kathryn Kallady speaks to Professor Rinehart.
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You have recently joined Deakin University and established the Childhood Study Centre what can you tell us about this setting? Deakin University has a renowed capacity for developing award-winning partnerships with hospitals, industry, governments, communities, and profes-sional associations. It is in this context that our team came to Deakin with a vision to create the Deakin Child Study Centre as a world-class concentration of multidisciplinary endeavor in child research and training. The Deakin Child Study Centre research program will focus on children with neurodevelopmental disorders, in particular Autism Spectrum Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. We can conceptualise the severity of ASD clinical presentation across a number of dimensions, e.g., core ASD symptom severity, ID, or ADHD symptom severity. After ID, ADHD is the other major naturally occurring comorbidity with ASD. A dual diagnosis of ASD and ADHD has only recently been included in DSM criterion (5/2013). DSM-5 is now in-line with epidemiological studies that show 59-75% of children with ASD have elevated ADHD symptomology.
When I give a talk about ASD – I often begin with the following quote to put into context the many gaps that exist in research…
“Autism is the fastest growing developmental disorder, with current incidence rates estimated at 1 in 150 children (US). This year more children will be diagnosed with autism than AIDS, diabetes and cancer combined, yet pro-found gaps remain in our understanding of both the causes and cures of the disorder”. (Landa, 07, Archives of Psychiatry).
This year we signed a MoU with Irabina – Victoria’s largest Autism Interven-tion provider with a 40 year history of providing early intervention to the ASD community. Together we are working on a research agenda to improve our understanding of health, sleep, physical activity, and motor development in children with ASD.
Are you looking for participants? If so how can we help? Through our National Health & Medical Research Council funded grants we are currently recruiting 7-12 years of age to participate in two streams of research; one that aims to improve the way we diagnose children with neu-rodevelopmental disorders using gait analysis, and the other that seeks to im-prove outcomes for children with ASD but better understanding the commonly comorbid sleep disorders these children experience. ASD & Motor: There is no medical test for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The motor profile of ASD may hold the key to improving clinical diagnosis and definition. The ASD motor profile may also provide vital clues for inter-vention. Our team has led the ASD motor field in Australia for over the last decade.
SLEEP & ASD: Approximately 73-86% of children with ASD experience sleep problems. Parent reported problems include problems with both sleep onset and sleep maintenance (e.g.,long sleep onset latency, short sleep duration, early morning waking). Sleep problems are also more persistent in children with ASD compared to typically developing children.
“Deakin is an inspiring and privileged place to work, so I feel very fortunate to have this opportunity to develop the Deakin Child Study Centre”
Research with Heart: Professor Nicole Rinehart
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A lot of your research has focused on Autism and motor movements, what are the key themes that you have uncovered that all psychologists should know (or be aware of)? We published a paper on this some time ago, led by one of our Doctorate of Clinical Neuropsychology students Dr Ariane Dowd: Clinical Psychologist Volume 14, Issue 3, 2010 Motor function and children with ASD: Why is this relevant to psychologists?It is important for clinicians to take a whole child perspective when assessing children with ASD - motor functioning is important and has key down-stream impacts on social and communicative functioning, probably best summarized by the pioneers of the ASD motor literature... “Autism is a disorder of relationship…and movement is important in rela-tionship. If you watch people interacting… you will see synchronies and symmetries in their movements, as if they are partners in a dance. But if you watch people with autism in interactions you will see asynchronies and asymmetries. If a dance is fundamental to relationship, there is something fundamentally wrong with the ability of people with autism to engage in it… Autistic children from an early age fail this dance of relationship, and the idea that a shared spatial and temporal scaffold is the foundation of it, and that the nervous system in autism can’t cooperate to build that scaf-fold… “ (quote Maurer, NIH Autism: The State of Science Conference, 1995).
How did you find yourself studying psychology? It was just all I ever wanted to study, and to tell you the truth I am not sure the exact moment I decided this, but the appeal of understanding the human condition always intrigued me. I do remember exactly the stimulus that drove my decision to do a PhD, when I worked with children who had autism and / or Asperger’s disorder at Monash Medical Centre in the mid 90’s, and I was intrigued at the clinical and neurobiological differences between these disorders. Almost two decades of research later, with the now internationally agreed upon term ‘Autism Spectrum Disorder’, the knew frontier for research is to focus less on understanding ‘catagorical diagnosis’ and more on dimensional approaches that map the cognitive, neurocircuit, and genetic aspects of disorders that will in the future yield new and better targets for treatments.
Not only are you a research psychologist, but you are also a practicing clinician and parent, how do you maintain a healthy work/life balance?I heard some one say the other day that we no longer talk about ‘work/life balance’ but should be talking about work / life integration. I am constantly working out how best to integrate my various hats. It is always a work in progress, sometimes all the balls are in the air, sometimes they are on the floor!
In terms of balancing clinical and academic work, I try to make one activity count towards another, what I learn in the clinic, I use to inform my teaching about neurodevelopmental disorders, what I discover in research I use to inform my clinical practice, and so on – just working different ends of the scientist-practitioner spectrum on different days. I am lucky that the term if ‘you enjoy what you do you never work a day in your life’ applies to me, Deakin is an inspir-ing and privileged place to work, so I feel very fortunate to have this opportunity to develop the Deakin Child Study Centre.
As a parent, thank goodness for ‘hot spot’ technology and lap top computers, friends are well used to me sitting out-side my children’s extracurricular classes with lap top and mobile phone in action.
National Schools Chaplaincy Program There has been much heated debate regarding the federal government’s investment into the NSCP (2011 - 2014). This move has been challenged in the high court. Darren Stops provided media outlets the reason why psychologist and professionally trained mental health professional are needed to be recognised in school settings.
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The APS’ general position on the NSCP is we acknowledge there is a serious problem, but this is not the solution. Student well-being and support services have always been provided in schools. School psychologists have a significant role in such services, providing systemic and preventative services as well as support for teachers, families and individ-ual students. The funding being used for the NSCP would be better directed to providing appropriately trained and qualified services of the type that school psychologists provide.
The current understanding of chaplain training, and its appropriateness for youth in emotional crisis is based upon available information, including research and information from the providers themselves. Chaplain training and its relevance is different in different states. For example, it’s reported that in Queensland, even chaplains with relevant training are forbidden by the guidelines to provide counselling. Recently, one of the chaplaincy providers indicated that although a minimum certificate IV in youth work was required, the majority of the chaplains in their state did not have such qualification.
The idea that chaplains have “supportive conversations” should be really concerning to anyone who has an under-standing of the problems that our young people face. When a young person works up the courage to seek adult help for a problem, you would hope that the person they spoke too would have the training and skills to help them deal with that problem. If this is not the case, that young person will often not seek further help, and may in fact learn from that experience that their problem is not fixable. Given that suicide is the leading cause of death for our young people, the government should be investing in appropriately trained mental health professionals to meet the needs of these young people to ensure their well-being and that they have a future in our society.
I’m also aware that a number of organisations and individuals have a significant concerns about the responses and views of chaplains and chaplaincy providers on a number of youth issues including relationships and sexuality.
The journalist also asked if there was research and precedent where pastoral care in lieu of psychological counsel had caused undue suffering. The first consideration is that psychological services are an essential part of student well being (pastoral care) program, and the vast majority of schools in Australia have psychologists. The Chaplaincy pro-viders own research indicated that not only were chaplains dealing with a majority of serious mental health problems, that they didn’t have the skills to do so, and that they were not referring on. The tragic death of Alex Wildman in New South Wales, who was never referred to the school psychologist, despite a history of problems, and obvious and ongoing bullying, saw questions raised in media regarding his regular involvement with the school chaplain.
There are complaints about chaplaincy services which are in the public domain, which include inappropriate and damaging responses to young people who are in distress. There is ample evidence (including a recent study from the UK) that inappropri-ate use of counselling does in fact cause harm to the recipients.
On the question of whether secular welfare be funded by the Federal government, we offered the following observations. Whilst many would argue that such services are the responsi-bilities of the state, the government already provides funding to other external mental health and welfare services, without the greatest results. Appropriate mental health services should be funded by the federal government, as we are facing a national crisis with our youth mental health. The best practice model would suggest having this money provided to increase the servic-es in our schools. Why not ensure that these services are provid-ed at the coalface, in the schools? Much more efficient to put the money into providing training programs for school psychologists, and allowing schools to employ them at a level that meets their need.
Written by mindfulness educator Whitney Stewart and illustrated by Sally Rippon of the Billie B books’ fame, Big Sky Mind is a book which makes meditation and mindfulness accessible for children and grown ups, 4 years old and over. Big Sky Mind features nine mind-fulness exercises each designed for specific purposes, ranging from spreading kindness to making a deci-sion. The exercises are written to be read aloud. The language is clear, instructive and non-threatening. It is as easy to imagine using this book with an adolescent in a counselling session as it is reading to my own children before bed. Sally Rippon’s two feature characters, an elephant and a monkey, are used evocatively.
In her blog, she suests the elephant represents the “heavy, bumbling mind” and the monkey, “the mind at its most skittish”. Used in conjunction with Whitney Stewart’s prose, the reader is shown how to both accept and control these two elements through mindfulness and meditation. I highly recommend Big Sky Mind as a great resource for psychologists wanting to incorporate mindfulness techniques in their work with chil-dren.
-Lara Silkoff-
Newsletter July 2014
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Book Review Recent Developments in Behavioural, Social, and Clinical Assessment of Children
Big Sky Mind Whitney Stewart & Sally Rippon
Presented by Dr. Jerome Sattler
This workshop will cover the latest developments in the assessment of behavioural, social, and clinical as-pects of children’s functioning. It will be based on Dr Sattler’s latest book “Foundations of Behavioral, Social, and Clinical Assessment of Children” Sixth Edition.
Topics will include bullying, cyberbul-lying, sports-related injuries, execu-tive functions, functional behavioral assessment, LD, ADHD, autism spec-trum disorders, and other disabilities. Attention will be given to DSM-5.
Registration Fees
Early bird until 30th April 2014: CEDP Members - $350 Students - $240 APS Members - $365 Non-Members - $395
Registration until 25th July 2014: CEDP Members - $395 APS Members - $410 Non-Members - $445 Students - $295
For further details on these work-shops, click the relevant location below:
BrisbaneFriday, August 15th, 2014
Adelaide Friday, August 22nd, 2014
Registration includes Dr Sattler’s latest book “Foun-dations of Behavioral, So-cial, and Clinical Assessment of Children” Sixth Edition, morning/afternoon tea and lunch.
Newsletter July 2014
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Name Committee Role Serving to EmailPaul Bertoia Chair 2014 [email protected] McKenzie Deputy Chair/ Newsletter
Editor2015 [email protected]
Linda Gilmore Membership Secretary / Working with Disability Rep
2014 [email protected]
John Roodenburg Chair of the Course Approv-als Committee
2014 [email protected]
Jenny Promnitz Chair of the Continuing PD Committee
2015 [email protected]
Gerald Wurf Secretary 2015 [email protected] Allen Treasurer / Webmaster 2015 [email protected] Boyle Journal Editor 2014 [email protected] Victorian Rep 2014 Lizette Campbell NSW Rep 2014 [email protected] Russo Qld Rep 2014 [email protected] Joyce WA Rep 2014 [email protected] Connell SA Rep 2014 [email protected] Fraser Tasmanian Rep 2014 [email protected] Crigan Student Rep 2014 [email protected] Swalwell Committee Member / Early
Intervention Rep2015 [email protected] .
TBA Committee Member / Older Persons Rep
2015
Susan O’Brien Committee Member 2015 [email protected] Stops (APS) Psychology in Schools
Advisor (ex officior)2015 [email protected]
APS CEDP 2014 National Committee Members
