Information for Patients / Parents

Who can benefit

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There is no simple answer to this question and whilst there are certain conditions that almost universally can benefit from our services, there are always patients who do not fit into one category. As a general rule of thumb we always say if there is a discrepancy between a students academic performance and their intelligence that might be able to help. The list below has conditions which usually benefit from our services:

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• Dyslexia

• Dyspraxia

• Dyscalculia

• ADHD

• ASD

• Brain Injuries (traumatic / congenital)

• Classroom difficulties i.e. poor reading, poor handwriting, low information retention etc

• SEN involvement (even prior to assessment)

• Poor concentration

• Poor academic outcomes

• Disruptive classroom behaviours

• Poor emotional wellbeing related to academic performance

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What we do

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We provide what is known as either Behavioural Optometry (old name) or Neurodevelopmental Optometry (NDO). We assess our patient's vision system, specifically the processing parts of the vision to try and identify any issues. If we find anything that isn't working as it should we provide therapeutic treatments to resolve these issues. Issues in visual processing are known to cause huge academic problems for the sufferer and often go untreated.

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How does it help

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For someone to be suitable for NDO they would have deficiencies in how their vision is processed, there are too many potential issues to list in this article, however, it is best summarised by an analogy;

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Imagine that the ideal vision experience is a cake, and there is an ideal recipe for the cake. If the recipe is not followed the chances are that the cake would still appear to be a cake, smell like a cake, and taste like a cake. What we do is analyze the cake to find out what went wrong then retrain the baker to make sure that the recipe is followed.

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All of our patients have features of their vision system that are deficient, it's our aim to improve these areas so that their vision system is comparable to their peers. 

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Does it work?

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We pride ourselves on involving our patients in their treatment and the measurement of their progress. The results of our work are often obvious to the patient as they see a marked improvement in their academic achievement, as well as overall well-being.

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The TVPS (test of visual and perceptive skills) is a test commonly performed by Educational Psychologists and measures a range of visual skills relevant to education. The test ranks the subject against their peers using a percentile system, i.e. 50th percentile is the average, the 90th is the top 10% and the 10th is the bottom 10%. As this system takes account of the patient's age it makes it a great tool to measure improvement that has come from an external source, and not just because they are older and more developed. We aim to improve all of our patient's scores to at least the 50th percentile.