If you are booked for an assessment, please collect any historical documents, like report cards and previous assessment reports (e.g., speech and language, occupational therapy, psychological).

Typically, you will be provided a suggested plan, fee assessment quote, and options of how to proceed, during your first appointment with the primary clinician. However, the process of accessing support is dynamic and changes somewhat depending on each individual case. We will break it down for you though the intake process and initial interviews. Our goal is for you to feel like you have a clear plan. If you have any questions after speaking with your primary clinician, our knowledgable admin team may be able to help answer your questions or will share any questions or concerns with your clinician for more feedback.

At Little Oaks, a comprehensive psychoeducational assessment takes approximately 6 weeks from the initial meeting with the psychologist until your results meeting. Autism assessments may take up to 8 weeks from start to finish. Mental health assessments that do not require additional testing, could take 4 weeks depending on the case.

Your psychologist can provide a more specific timeline once they have determined the needs for your assessment, and can be asked for more information.

Many factors can affect the timing of your assessment, such as any health issues that arise or cancellations and rescheduling needed, prompt submission of all paperwork and questionnaires, billing issues, or a clients pace during testing.

Following your results meeting, you will receive a secure link via email to the clients Jane App profile where the report File has been uploaded by your clinician. Thee report File can be accessed by logging in to the client profile and navigating to Documents/Files (Note: for a child’s report you must login via the child’s profile using the username/password for that profile).

We strive to provide your finalized report within 48 hours after your results meeting. However, if more information is presented, changes are needed to the report at that time, this timeline can be affected. Your psychologist should inform you of any anticipated delays and when the report can be expected.

Reassessments may be sought in a few circumstances:

1. If a child was assessed quite young (e.g., under 8), they may require an updated assessment within 2-3 years depending on the concerns.

2. At significant transitions, such as from elementary to middle school, or at the transition to high school or post-secondary, reassessments may inform programming and accommodation decisions.

3. Some diagnoses, such as ADHD and Autism and learning disabilities, may be reassessed at various stages to determine the current severity of symptoms or treatment needs across stages of development, but do not necessarily require re-diagnosis.

4. Neurodevelopmental conditions (e.g., ADHD, ASD, LD) that were diagnosed young may require updated assessments to determine cognitive functioning, changing learning needs, and assess gains made from interventions (e.g., meds, behaviour interventions).

5. As an adult, you may wonder how your symptoms compare to when you were a child and how to direct your energy, or for support/treatment planning and workplace accommodations.

After your assessment, you may choose to schedule follow-up treatment or intervention services by contacting our intake team. Based on your assessment outcomes, you may have received a recommendation for intervention or treatment if advised.

At Little Oaks Psychology, we also offer a complimentary post-assessment implementation session. These sessions, focusing on learning and behavior, are conducted by our exceptional graduate-level interns. This session provides an opportunity for you to ask questions you may not have been ready to ask during your results meeting, gain more information about implementing recommendations, or explore how to best advocate and take next steps. While this session is not mandatory, it is available to all assessment clients for up to three months after their results meeting.

The post-assessment session focuses on follow-up regarding results and report recommendations and is not intended to replace a therapy session.

The session can be attended by an adult client, a teenager over 12 years old (if recommended by the clinician), or the child’s parent. It is most beneficial once the client or parent has read the report and had time to process the results.

If an individual aged 13 or older will be attending primarily on their own, we require a guardian to be present at the start of the session to provide consent. However, we encourage parents to attend alongside their youth or teen to maximize the session's benefits

This 50-minute session can take place online or in person, which is recommended for teens.

Post-assessment sessions are booked with our clinical interns, who are experienced in report review and strategic implementation.

The duration of therapy is very case-dependent and will be determined collaboratively between you and your therapist. Your therapist will have an idea of the timeline based on your presenting concerns and needs. They will often provide you with a general expectation, but nothing is set in stone—every person and circumstance is different.

Some clients come for a session or two, while others need or want a longer period of support. Sometimes, your therapist may suggest stopping treatment once you meet specific referral goals, but you may not feel ready at that time. It is important to discuss your concerns with your therapist and come to an understanding together. Some clients attend occasional “maintenance” sessions to stay on track.

Ultimately, the length of time in therapy is a personal and clinical decision made between you and your therapist.

While all treatment frequencies show an upward trend in terms of progress according to the research, it is the speed of progress that appears to be dependent on frequency. Research has shown an upward trend toward growth/change from weekly sessions, biweekly, and even every third week, depending on the amount of work and support an individual engages outside of sessions (e.g., frequency of practice). However, monthly or longer breaks between therapy sessions have been shown to have significantly slower growth/change rates, with greater chance of waning effects between sessions, and thus a more wave-like trajectory.

Progress and frequency also depend on the specific concerns and several other factors, such as age of the client, support network, history, complexity, personal preference, willingness to practice/implementation of strategies outside of sessions, and recommended guidelines for a form of therapy.

There are times and circumstances when a specific therapy is inadvisable or when the therapist will advise a longer break between sessions; usually this will be to give time and opportunity for change and/or practice to occur in “real life.”

It’s understandable to feel hesitant after previous experiences. At Little Oaks we will explore with you what has worked and what hasn’t in your past therapy. Each therapeutic relationship is unique, shaped by the dynamic between the therapist and client, as well as the specific techniques and approaches used. Together, we can tailor our approach to better meet your needs and goals.

We're confident that therapy can be successful, especially when you find the right approach and clinical fit. The key is finding a therapeutic process that resonates with you and addresses your unique needs, rather than feeling obligated to stick with one clinician or service. It’s essential to communicate openly with your clinician, especially when something doesn’t feel like it’s working or isn’t helpful. Your feedback can guide adjustments to the therapy, ensuring that it’s tailored to support your healing and growth effectively.

At Little Oaks, we utilize a combination of behavioural, attachment-based, and emotion-focused principles when working with children and their parents. We feel strongly about involving parents in treatment for children. While even very young children may receive direct treatment at Little Oaks, parents are usually heavily involved in their treatment to ensure generalizability and consistency in implementation of learned strategies.

Play-based techniques are used with children as play is crucial for children’s learning and development because it engages them in active exploration, experimentation, and problem-solving. Through directed and open ended play, children practice and refine essential skills such as communication, social interaction, creativity, and critical thinking. In therapy we help them make sense of the world around them, understand cause and effect, and develop specific self-regulation skills and emotion vocabulary. Moreover, we work with the child and parents to help foster resilience, adaptability, and emotional regulation, laying the foundation for lifelong learning and well-being.

In short, unfortunately, no. Some mental health counselling services are accessible and covered by public health care, but these are mostly for crisis, short-term, and acute psychiatric concerns through public health care settings, such as hospitals or primary care networks (PCN). Some assessments may be accessed through Alberta Health Services (AHS) through hospitalisation or specialist referral.

Private psychological clinics, such as Little Oaks, offer client-centered psychological assessments and treatments that are unfortunately not covered by the Alberta government. Such services are not yet defined in the Canada Health Act as “medically necessary” despite recent moves by advocacy groups to promote this. The Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) shared a vision where mental health is seen as universal human right. However, for now, psychological and mental health services are not covered/paid by the Governments of Canada or Alberta.

To help families with affordability and access to services, funding options may include extended health insurance plans that cover psychological services of your choice, primary care networks that offer limited services as part of their team-based care, employer-provided employee assistance programs that cover limited psychological services, and schools (including universities and colleges) that may have limited services available to students.

There are three main ways payments occur at Little Oaks:

(1) Private insurance/benefits (e.g., Blue Cross; Unify)

(2) Personal/Self-funded (e.g., debit in office; e-transfer; credit card)

(3) Third-party funding (e.g., Jordan’s Principal)

NOTE: In all cases we require a credit card on file either to process payments that are not able to be directly billed to insurance, or in case of no-shows or late cancellations.

Credit card information is entered directly to our payment processor and is processed in a PCI-compliant manner. We do not keep your credit card information. Note that when credit card information is referred to as being “stored”, this means we have a “token”. The token replaces sensitive information and acts as a non-sensitive placeholder that can be used by the payment processor to reference your credit card information when payments need to be processed.

Our billing department will require billing details for the primary policyholder. All receipts record the following information:

• That a “Psychological Service” was provided

• The Date and Time of service

• The clinician’s name and registration details (e.g., R.Psych. or Provisional Psychologist or CCC or MHT), including their supervisor if relevant

• Participants in the session and/or engaged in treatment (dependent on session type and therapeutic purpose)

• Any outstanding balance unpaid (e.g., remaining amount after direct billing)

NOTE: If the primary policyholder’s benefits do not cover 100% of a session, the remaining balance is charged to the credit card on file.

IMPORTANT: We can only direct bill under one person, per session and cannot coordinate multiple people per session through direct billing. However, if you have secondary coverage, you can submit claims manually to your insurance provider.