Working Proposal of Assessment Services, Cotlands Community Outreach Program

Assesments will strive to be comprehensive, redundant, and multimodal. Developmental assessments should include cognitve, motor, and social-emotional levels, including parent-child relations and home environment. Psychoeducational assessments should cover cognitive abilities, academic skills, and social-emotional functioning, as well as other factors, such as home environment, socioeconomic conditions, quality of education, and physical illnesss, each of which can affect a child’s capacities to learn and benefit from education. African models of child development will be incorporated, such as the importance of siblings, peers, and related adult community members in contributing to child development. The latter will be conceptualized later, in collaboration with key informants from Cotlands community careworkers and other sources in situ.

Infants & Toddlers (0-2 years)

Cognitive/developmental assessment. Begin with screening (Bayleys-III) with primary caregiver; a translator will be needed. If a significant developmental delay is flagged, administer full Bayley’s Scales-III to estimate nature of delay; a translator will be needed.

Social-emotional assessment. Administer Greenspan Developmental Milestones with primary caregiver; a translator will be needed.

Home environment. Administer the H.O.M.E. at the child’s home with both child & caregiver present. Ideally, this would be done as part of a careworker’s visit, so that questions and replies can be translated. Administer the BDI-II and Coping Response Inventory in a structured interview with the primary caregiver, with translator.

Preschoolers (3-6 years)

Cognitive/developmental assessment. Administer selected subtests from the KABC-II and the Leiter to estimate child’s baseline measures of cognitive abilities.

Social-emotional and resiliency assessment. Administer BERS-2 with primary caregiver with translator. Use separate form with careworker’s observations. Administer the ASEBA and/or TSCYC with caregiver and careworker.

Home environment. Administer the H.O.M.E. at the child’s home with both child & caregiver present. Ideally, this would be done as part of a careworker’s visit, so that questions and replies can be translated. Administer the BDI-II and Coping Response Inventory in a structured interview with the primary caregiver, with translator.

Middle Childhood (7-12 years)

Cognitive/developmental assessment. Administer KABC-II non-verbal subtests, selected Leiter subtests, and Bender-II to estimate cognitive abilities. For bilingual students, add verbal subtests from the KABC-II Mental Processing Index.

Achievement assessment. Administer selected subtests from the KTEA-2 to estimate levels of academic achievement. Estimate English language competency for children receiving school instruction in English. Identify more ecologically valid achievement measures.

Social-emotional and resiliency assessment. Administer BERS-2 and Resiliency Scales. Administer to caregivers the ASEBA using Zulu or Xhosa translations where appropriate, or with translator. If child high on anxiety/depression ASEBA scales, administer TCYC with caregiver and careworker. With careworker, administer to the child the Depression and Anxiety versions from the BYI.

Home environment. Administer the H.O.M.E. at the child’s home with both child & caregiver present. Ideally, this would be done as part of a careworker’s visit, so that questions and replies can be translated. Administer the BDI-II and Coping Response Inventory in a structured interview with the primary caregiver, with translator.

Adolescents (13-18 years)

Cognitive/developmental assessment. Administer KABC-II to compose Mental Processing Index, selected Leiter subtests, and Bender-II to estimate cognitive abilities. Add KABC-II CHC ability subtests, depending on child’s English competency, to estimate full range of cognitive abilities.

Achievement assessment. Administer the KTEA-2 to estimate levels of academic achievement.

Social-emotional and resiliency assessment . Administer Resilency Scales and ASEBA YSR to child, with careworker translations as needed. If elevations on depression/anxiety scale, administer TCC and the Depression and Anxiety versions from the BYI to child. Administer the ASEBA to caregiver using Zulu or Xhosa translations where appropriate, or with translator.

Home environment. Administer the H.O.M.E. at the child’s home with both child & caregiver present (up to age 16). Ideally, this would be done as part of a careworker’s visit, so that questions and replies can be translated. Administer the BDI-II and Coping Response Inventory in a structured interview with the primary caregiver, with translator.

In 2005 at the International Society of Theoretical Psychology (ISTP) meeting in Cape Town (hosted by faculty of the University of South Africa Psychology) I had my first encounter not only with South Africa but with South African Psychology. This was quickly followed by attending the International Critical Psychology Conference, hosted by the University of Kwazulu-Natal department of Psychology in Durban. The two associations tend to overlap to some degree in membership and in supporting critical and social-historical inquiries into psychology's sociopolitical effects. With the exception of participating in a similarly co-occurance of these associations in Sidney in 1999, this was my only direct encounter with the ideas of psychologists outside of North America and Great Britain. It was my association with Critical Psychology and Psychologists for Social Responsibility that led me to go to Sydney and now Cape Town and Durban, and so I was anticipating exchanges and relationships with relatively like-minded psychologists who, due to their investment in social justice, exist at the margins of their own national psychological associations.

What I came away with were enduring reverberations caused by the potency of this conjunction of a minority of international leftist psychologists with South Africa in only its tenth year of democracy. I was not interested in psychology at the time of my own country's racial transformation, the civil rights movement; it is only in my role as teacher of US psychology's historical and social contexts that I relate to that time, which included uncovering psychology's contributions to maintaining a racist sociopolitical system along with its role in undermining segregation. Here I found a group of psychologists actively involved in (at minimum): (1) reorienting psychology as a discipline toward a reparation of the wrongs it had perpetrated upon its non-white citizens; (2) recreating psychology as morally bound to promote the health and well-being of those who have been wronged under society's and psychology's dividing practices; and (3) promoting the cultural lives of the oppressed in the service a multivocal, non-hegemonic psychology for South Africans. There could not be a more auspicious time and place for the emergence of transformative psychological theories and practices with implications across the globe.

In South Africa, the history of psychology is quite similar to our own in the US, primarily because we share a colonial history that included slavery of black Africans, which was followed by a system legal segregation of blacks and whites promoted by one segment of the citizenry who saw their way of life threatened by racial equality. Our involvement in eugenics ideology and practices connected with South Africa's steps toward Apartheid in ways that left a lasting imprint on the latter's development of psychology. The eugenics movement was most successful as a combined science-ideology in the US, Great Britain, Germany, and South Africa; intelligence testing was used in research to support a racist agenda in all contexts. That the majority of psychologists wrapped themselves in scientistic neutrality in the face of Apartheid's enormous crimes against humanity is does not make them unique in the profession. It was July 2008 when at last APA resolved that, "[a]ny direct or indirect participation in any act of torture or other forms of cruel, degrading or inhuman treatment or punishment by psychologists is strictly prohibited". The integration of ethnic, racial and other social minorties into APA has made progress since 1970 and still has much to accomplish, though more now in the area of leadership at the institutional and national levels. Just in time, perhaps, for when the US white population is no longer the majority racial group.

It is here, of course, at the question of size of representation where South African psychology, as a 'first world' hegemonic institution, distinguishes itself from the rest. In the US there are now explicit efforts to have the faculty and student population reflect the diversity of our national census (not taking into account the 'feminization' of psychology and other practitioner disciplines). This affirmative action goal, while evidently still difficult for us to achieve, still reserves 69% room for caucasions, 12% blacks, 12.6 hispanics, 3.6% asians, and almost 1% native americans. In South Africa's case, a representative proportion of white psychologists would be 9.1 %, black 79.6%, colored 8.9% and indian/asian 2.5%. The enormity of the change for representation in South African psychology is so overwhelming that it serves to palpably implicate an outsider like me into this tragedy of colonial and postcolonial devastation on indiginous Africans.

South African psychology has an unfortunate historical association with the orgins of Apartheid. Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd's was a graduate student and later a professor of psychology at the africaner University of Stellenbosch. Verwoerd later became a politician and was responsible for establishing Apartheid in 1959. With the exception of a small number of courageous psychologists, South African psychology did not weigh in against the apartheid regime. There were clearly significant risks involved in protesting apartheid or studying its destructive psychological (among other) effects upon non-white africans, and many emigrated to be free of apartheid's barriers to the profession or from prosecution for exposing its human rights violations. Those who remained and continued to work against apartheid are models for us all; ashamedly, I cannot imagine myself ever having their courage.

At this moment in history, at the beginning of an african South Africa, when small groups of psychologists across the world collaborate with communities and other professions in efforts to change themulti-determined conditions of poverty and oppression, what is possible? Does the enormity of the reparative change distract or defeat us? What services can western, white, critical psychologists contribute as minority players in the development of an african psychology? In what cases do we become a hindrance?

It has become clear to me that I want to make whatever contributions I can to the success of South Africa's democracy and to easing the suffering of those citizens who suffer most; my skills as a critical and clinical psychologist make up the bulk of what I can contribute. My first steps have been guided by humility, curiosity, and gratitude; I have marred these steps at other times with ungratefulness, self-absorbtion, passivity, and fear. When all of me shows up for this challenge, I cannot forget to attend to and repair unintended negative outcomes of my actions in this effort.

Proposal Accepted!

I was happy to receive the following message from Cotlands on 2/26/09:

"Dear Susan,

Conducting Research at Cotlands

The Child Development and Research Committee met on the 10th February 2009 and discussed the importance of conducting research to assess our child clients’ academic delays and how they could be addressed. The committee agreed that it is an important initial step to take in the process of addressing the educational needs of children in our care. Therefore the Committee has granted you approval to conduct this research at Cotlands. You need to submit a proposal that will be reviewed by the committee and then you can proceed with the research.

Thank you very much for your interest in the welfare of our children.

Yours sincerely,

Busi Nkosi
Community Outreach Manager"