Educational Psychology Service

Enfield Educational Psychology Service (EPS) is the main provider of psychological services to Enfield schools. We have direct links with services in education, health and social care, which promotes a coordinated approach.

The EPS works at different levels with schools to support children and young people’s learning and wellbeing. This includes applying psychology with:

• Whole-school work such as training, projects and policy development. Some whole-school initiatives with EPS involvement are delivered at no cost to schools, such as My Young Mind Enfield, E-TIPSS, ECASS and EASA.
• Staff development e.g. training and supervision/reflective practice support.
• Individual children and young people and their families, where there are concerns about their learning, development, emotional wellbeing or behaviour.
• Groups of children and young people, e.g. facilitating workshops or delivering interventions such as managing anxiety.
• Groups of parents and carers, e.g. facilitating workshops or delivering parenting programmes. Some parenting programmes delivered with EPS involvement are accessible at no cost to schools through EASA, ECASS and SWERRL.

We work with you to identify your priorities for each term, and to agree the way we will work together. This planning time will need to be factored into your purchasing.

When we work with individual children and young people (at SEN Support or with an EHCP), your school and families can expect:

• A first meeting (consultation) bringing together parents and school staff to explore what is going well, what the child’s needs might be, and to identify what we might need to find out more about.
• Further assessment as agreed together. We might observe the child in their classroom or playground, have more conversations with school staff or parents, or do some individual work or assessment with the child. We will usually meet with the child to understand their views.
• A feedback and action planning meeting (where needed), bringing together parents and school to come to a shared understanding about the child’s needs, and to agree together the next steps to support the child.
• Review meetings (where needed). It may be that further thinking or information is needed to ensure that the support in place is making a difference for the child.
• A written record following direct work. This sets out the work we have done, the shared understanding of the child’s strengths and needs, and the agreed support plan/recommendations. This will usually have been discussed with schools and parents/carers along the way, so it typically does not contain new information. If we are joining a school review meeting, schools will usually provide the written record or updated IEP/LSP.
• For children and young people with more complex SEND, where the school is planning to make a request for an EHC Needs Assessment within the next four terms, we are continuing to pilot an approach where the EP writes a full Record of Involvement with a comprehensive outcomes and provision table.  If the child’s EHCNA is agreed at SEN Panel and the EP report can be used as statutory advice, the school will be reimbursed 3 hours of traded time to acknowledge the additional EP time that the school has used upstream.

Supervision/Reflective Spaces

Part of trauma-informed practice is building resilience in the adults around the child & family. The EPS will be continuing to offer confidential individual and group supervision which provides a safe, confidential space to discuss and reflect on your professional role and work in school.  We would usually allocate a different EP from your school EP.  There are several schools that have bought into the supervision offer for several years.   Representative feedback from our 2024/25 survey reports that “Staff well-being improved after they had received supervision.”

Group Supervision/Reflection Spaces

• Size of group - 6-8 members.  This will be a closed group once started. 
• Membership – we will try to group staff by their main role, e.g. Deputy Head, SENCO, DSL, Senior Mental Health Lead, Class teacher. 
• Duration of session - 1.5 hours
• Frequency – Half termly
• Modality – online
• What it looks like: The psychologist will provide a facilitated, protected, non-judgemental space. A ‘Reflecting Team’ approach will be used to provide a structured framework for processing and reflection.  This will offer the opportunity to explore the emotional impact of the professional role and deepen understanding. Group members will have an experience of a model that they will be able to take away and use within their own settings. There will be a group agreement in relation to confidentiality. Feedback and evaluation will be integrated into the sessions.

Individual supervision/Reflective space

• Offered individually
• Duration – One hour
• Frequency – 9 sessions over the course of the year (between April 2024 and March 2025)
• Modality – online
• What it looks like: A supervision contract will be agreed from the outset which includes agreement in relation to confidentiality. Supervisees will be provided with a protected, non-judgemental space to think, reflect and learn.  This provides the opportunity to explore the emotional impact of the professional role and deepen understanding. This is not intended to be a replacement for personal therapy. Feedback and evaluation will be integrated into the sessions.  

The EPS staff includes:

• Qualified Educational Psychologists who are registered with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC).
• Trainee Educational Psychologists (TEPs) who are enrolled on approved 3 year doctorate training courses and work under the supervision of experienced HCPC-registered EPs within the team.  Their independence in the area of traded work is carefully monitored in line with their experience and development as Trainee Educational Psychologists:
  • Year 1 TEPs work is always under the direction of an EP and they do not work in traded capacity.
  • Year 2 and 3 TEPs are allocated traded work. Initially TEPs are allocated to a school that they share with an EP.  Gradually TEPs are expected to work more independently as they move into Year 3 of their training.
• Assistant Educational Psychologists who work in partnership and under the direction of our qualified EPs.
• Qualified Locum and Associate Educational Psychologists (for statutory work only).

EPS Model for 2025/26 – Summer term 2025

• For the past two years, the EPS has operated with an EP/Assistant EP ratio model.   Assistant EPs work in partnership with HCPC-registered Educational Psychologists.  We will be continuing to offer this model for the summer term 2025.   We have maintained the ratio of Educational Psychologist to Assistant Educational Psychologists depending on days purchased. 
• The day rate is dependent on the number of days schools purchase and takes into account the cost differential for Educational Psychologist and/or Assistant EPs. 

Summer EP/Assistant EP model – Summer term 2025 only

EPS Model for 2025/26 – Autumn 2025 & Spring 2026 terms

• Due to successful recruitment and retention of our EPs, we are pleased to be able to offer schools the opportunity to purchase the amount of EP days they would like from Sept 2025, all of which can be delivered by a qualified or Trainee Educational Psychologist. 

• We know that many of our schools have valued the Assistant EP role in their school.  So we are also offering schools the opportunity to purchase Assistant EP time for training and interventions in school.  This time cannot be used for individual casework.  There are full details of what our Assistant EPs can offer  on the   EPS website.

• As requested, schools will be able to buy into individual or group supervision/reflective practice support.  

• We strongly encourage schools to request what they want now to avoid disappointment, ss we are unlikely to be able to fulfil mid-year purchasing requests.

Supervision charges for 25/26

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Impact of the EPS

The EPS evaluates all of our work, using parent/carer and school surveys and other approaches. You can read a full evaluation of the impact of each aspect of our work in our Annual Report on our website.

What our schools say:

“Our EP has been fantastic in supporting the school with strategies to support individual children. She has made our parents feel comfortable and reassured through the EP process. The training that has been delivered and the workshops that have been shared have really supported our vision and helped to develop a culture of inclusive practice.”

“Our EP is fantastic to work with, she is supportive, helpful, approachable, organised and shares great knowledge. With the advice and support from her we have managed to put plans together for individual students and offer support to the parents. Our EP has been good with signposting to other services. This has left parents and school feeling confident with next steps and moving forward.”

“Individual children and the team around them have been well supported through the plan-do-review cycle. The quality of outcomes have improved.”

“IEPs for children with specific needs are more effective and enable the children to make further progress Teachers and Teaching Assistants are more confident when supporting children with needs and when speaking with parents Inclusion”

“CYP have made good progress with the strategies recommended from EP involvement.”

“The support we have received has enabled us to proceed with our planned support journeys for key children and their families. We also have been able to support staff which best recommendations, the EP reports which we receive are a fantastic resource.”

“EP has supported parents to have a better understanding of their child's additional needs.”

What our parents/carers say:

“I just wanted to thank you for taking the time out of your day to listen to our concerns and support us through this process. We sincerely appreciate this from the bottom of our hearts.”

“As parents, we were very pleased to have an EP involved with our child... Involvement from an EP has given us invaluable reassurance that our child's needs have been and will be taken into account and has given us and the school further strategies to support them. Thank you!”

“I feel that things have moved very quick which is impressive and they have given me reassurance that my son will receive the support that is well needed.”

“I really appreciate your help and the time you spent talking to me to understand everything about my child and his needs - I also felt really heard and understood too, so thank you for that as well as that doesn’t happen too often!”

Educational psychology work that is not charged to schools:

The EPS also offers some services which are commissioned by the Local Authority – there are no additional charges to schools for these services:

• Providing psychological advice as part of a child or young person’s (statutory) Education, Health and Care Needs Assessment.
• Offering a rapid response to school leadership teams to support them in helping their school community following a critical incident or sad event. Please see our website for our critical incident response protocol, and e-mail eps@enfield.gov.uk to access this help. 
• EPS involvement through other multi-disciplinary teams, i.e. EASA, ECASS, Youth Justice Service, Virtual School for LAC/CiN/CP, My Young Mind Enfield (MYME) and SWERRL. This work tends not to involve individual casework.