What we offer
Individual student assessment
- We can provide assessments of individual students at the request of parents and whānau, schools or outside agencies.
- We use a range of tools including interviews, observations, dynamic and one to one standardised assessments of a student’s learning needs and strengths.
- Most assessments take about 3 hours. You’ll receive a written report profiling the student’s learning strengths and needs relating to cognitive skills.
- If requested, we can provide parents and teachers a further, in-depth assessment of each student’s needs and environment to identify goals and next steps.
Training, coaching and professional development
- Training and coaching packages for teaching teams customised to develop their skills and knowledge of specific learning and behavioural challenges.
- Recommending and supporting implementation of strategies to support wellbeing and learning of individuals, groups of students, classes or the whole school.
- Working with schools to review policies, processes and resources in order to identify and develop school-wide support for students with diverse needs
- Supporting implementation of whole-school initiatives aimed at creating inclusive environments for all students. This may also include developing restorative practice strategies and whole-school behavior management strategies.
Teacher consultation
- We provide facilitated consultation with individual or groups of teachers working with a particular student.
About us
Karen Harris
I’ve been working as an Educational Psychologist for 15 years and prior to this I was a secondary school teacher.
I enjoy working collaboratively with children, families and schools and applying psychology to support a range of learning and behavioural needs.
I have particular interests in the areas of bullying prevention, solution focused interventions with children and young people, learning difficulties and training and PD for teachers.
Victoria Parsons
I'm a qualified Educational Psychologist with experience of working with children with learning and behaviour needs in early intervention and school settings. I enjoy facilitating solution focussed processes and work collaboratively with students, their families and teachers to find ways to support children's learning and emotional well-being. I am interested in Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT), supporting inclusion, gender, specific learning difficulties, autism, anxiety and trauma.
Testimonials
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We are thankful for a service which provides professional and quality assessments, interventions, and practitioners who establish excellent rapport with the students.
Deputy Principal of a High School -
Karen has been amazing to work with. Our son really clicked with her. She helped him in a big way and had some very practical ideas as well. Karen has given great support to the school too. As the parents we have felt well listened to and very supported not only throughout but ongoing as well. Highly recommend Karen to everyone.
Parents -
Karen started seeing me to help with a few issues I had with my anger and emotions. I really liked Karen for many reasons like she was friendly and I felt very comfortable around her. Karen always helped me look back and see what I could of done better and together we can up with ideas and strategies and soon I could look back and be proud of how I managed myself. Anyway overall Karen is great and helped me come very far and all thanks to Karen I can now do stuff differently. Thanks Karen.
10 year old girl -
Dr Karen Harris has carried out several assessments with our eight year old, establishing a great a rapport early on and making the assessments an enjoyable positive experience. Karen was approachable and empathetic, taking the time to meet with us and our daughter’s teachers to get a thorough understanding of the situation. The reports she provided were comprehensive, concise and easy to understand and Karen was always more than happy to talk through her findings and recommendations with us and the teaching staff. We are really grateful to Karen for her time and expertise and we would highly recommend her services to anyone with a child with learning challenges.
Parents of 8 year old girl -
I found working with Karen really good. She has good ideas that are helpful. I found it really easy to talk to her. She helped me get friends too. I really liked working with her.
10 year old boy