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Assessments conducted focus on understanding the child in the context of the family that supports them, enabling the most appropriate and realistic interventions to be developed. An understanding of family stress and mental health as well as strengths and protective factors is obtained during Dr Wong's assessment. Recommendations for managing family stress and mental health, and the promotion of strengths and protective factors are made, to complement child-focused recommendations.
Dr Wong also provides assessments for families of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) Backgrounds. Dr Wong has an understanding of how culture interacts with disability in terms of available information and resources, culturally-based beliefs about child development, interpretation of diagnoses such as Autism, and interactions between families of CALD backgrounds and the health system. These culturally-specific factors contribute to an understanding of a child and family's presenting problems and delivery of treatment approaches.
Dr Wong focuses on the generalisability of skills taught to children in the Psychology Clinic to the home and other environments. Therefore the provision of skills training for families in supporting their children is an essential component of the clinical psychology services provided. Assessments can involve home visits to assess parenting capacity. Treatment approaches include the modeling of teaching to parents, parent role plays of how they support their children at home, direct teaching between parent and child in the Psychology Clinic to allow for feedback and prompting, and the use of home-based tasks for parents to practice skills with their child. Parent self-monitoring and evaluation of new skills is also an important part of treatment to enable children's continued learning, application of learnt skills to new situations, and independence.
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