Course dates and times:
8th October 2020 and 15th October 2020,
9.30am to 4pm,
Registration from 9.15 am

Event aim / objective:

- To explore the rationale underpinning intermediary assessment and describe an intermediary assessment framework; illustrated by practical assessment examples.

(NB The course will not cover the assessment of adults with acquired or progressive conditions, those with a primary mental health difficulty or vulnerable suspects/defendants).

Participants will:

1. Understand police expectations of a registered intermediary assessment

2. Consider the different purposes of intermediary assessment

3. Explore an intermediary assessment framework with shared practical examples

4. Appreciate the different language and social communication skills needed for the police interview vs court situations

5. Explore the difference in language and social communication skills needed for different allegations (for example assault vs neglect)

6. Be aware of sources of existing informal language assessments

7. Consider ways to feed back assessment findings to the interviewing officer to support interview planning

Course content:

• The police perspective of intermediary assessment:
  Officer's expectations of RI assessment to include:

- Levels of officer involvement in the assessment
- RI feedback of assessment findings with officers.
- What is an interview plan?
- What training officers get on child development, neglect and adjusting their interview planning and questioning focus to the specific offence.
- The national and local police strategy focus on different offence types e.g. sexual offences, neglect that may affect the frequency of which types of offences we are completing assessments for
- A step by step examination of the aspects of assessment including the purpose, manner and thinking behind the intermediary assessment. 

• We will consider the intermediary assessment framework, looking at developmental assessment topics and skills, and examples of how we can assess the areas of:
• physical needs

• sensory processing
• emotional regulation
• attention and listening 
• understanding spoken language
• auditory memory
• expressive language/talking
• speech
• social communication skills and non-verbal communication
• reading and understanding visual information
• writing and drawing
   
• We will discuss how best to provide assessment feedback to the relevant police officer from the intermediary’s perspective; and
• How to  tailor the assessment to the offence allegation:

The course is interactive and discursive; with a philosophy of learning from each other. We encourage a sharing of information to collectively improve understanding and learning.