Overview

The Help Group – UCLA Neuropsychology Program, established in 1997, specializes in helping families and educational teams understand students’ learning patterns. The program is a partnership between The Help Group and UCLA’s Medical Psychology Assessment Center. Our goal is to help explain what advances children’s learning and what inhibits their development.  Through a comprehensive assessment process, we provide individualized recommendations to maximize students’ learning potential.

What is Pediatric Neuropsychology? Pediatric Neuropsychology is a unique specialty that uses tools from neuroscience and psychology to understand how the developing brain affects the way children think, behave and learn.

Services & Assessments

Neuropsychological Services

Neuropsychological Services include evaluation and testing, diagnosis, family conferencing, education, consultations with schools and physicians and follow-up services. The evaluation will help answer questions about the student’s learning ability and behavior.

During each evaluation, a pediatric neuropsychologist examines a wide range of functions:

• Academic skills
• Attention and concentration
• Executive functioning
• Intellectual abilities
• Language processing and speech
• Learning and memory capacities
• Motor functioning
• Sensory capacities
• Visual and nonverbal functions

Neuropsychological Reports

The clinician will generate a comprehensive neuropsychological evaluation report. This report will consist of the patient’s relevant history, the results of the testing in narrative and data formats, a diagnosis section, and recommendations for further treatment. The patient will meet with his or her clinician for a one-hour feedback session, during which he or she will be able to go over the information contained in the report, as well as receive his or her own copy of the report.

Common diagnoses include:

• Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
• Autism spectrum disorders
• Birth injury / Anoxia
• Brain injury or stroke
• Brain tumors
• Epilepsy
• Genetic anomalies
• Infectious diseases
• Learning disabilities
• Lead poisoning
• Tourette’s Syndrome

Recommendations

After a diagnosis is made, our neuropsychologist will work closely with parents, the referring physicians and the educational team to design a personalized treatment plan. A full range of follow-up services is provided at The Help Group including: outpatient psychotherapy, speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and psychiatric treatment.

Scheduling Evaluations

The Help Group – UCLA Neuropsychology Program evaluates all individuals five years of age or older. A complete neuropsychological battery takes approximately 12 to 15 hours to complete. Patients will meet with their clinicians twice during the week for a one-on-one assessment. Testing time blocks are typically 9:00 a.m. to noon, the families break for lunch, and then we resume from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.

The Help Group serves Medi-Cal eligible clients. For more information regarding fees for services and private insurance, or to schedule an appointment, please call 877.943.5747 or 818.781.0360 or e-mail assessment@thehelpgroup.org.