Assessment Services for students with disability

Supporting Department of Education in Victoria

Supporting applications for students with disability in Victorian government schools

The Students with Disability Assessment Service (SwD-AS) is delivered by MAX Health. We are an independent assessment service conducting assessments on behalf of the Department of Education (the department) for schools who wish to apply for support for students with disability in Victorian government schools through the Program for Students with Disabilities (PSD) or Disability Inclusion.

We conduct cognitive and language assessments to establish whether a student has an:

intellectual developmental disorder, or
severe language disorder with high functional needs (including students with complex communication needs).

These assessments determine whether students meet the eligibility requirements for the PSD, and assist schools and families to better understand a student's educational needs, providing valuable information for a Disability Inclusion Profile. These assessments also support enrolment processes for specialist schools for students with intellectual developmental disorder.

Further information about the assessment service can be found on the department’s website Assessment service for students with disability.

To make a referral to us, please call our team on (03) 9678 5100. Further information about this process is also located below.

Once a referral has been made, you can review the progress of your referral via your school dashboard. For help logging in to the dashboard, view the dashboard instructions.

Call us to make a referral

To make a referral or speak to the team, please call:

03 9678 5100

Translated parent information sheets

Download parent information sheets in Arabic, Vietnamese, Karen, and Punjabi.

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Access the dashboard

Review the progress of your referrals

Applying for a cognitive or language assessment through the Students with Disability Assessment Service

1 Eligibility
2 Referral
3 Assessment
4 Feedback
5 Report

Eligibility for cognitive and language assessments through our service

We conduct cognitive and language assessments to establish whether a student has an:

intellectual developmental disorder, or
severe language disorder with high functional needs (including students with complex communication needs).

These assessments determine whether students meet the eligibility requirements for the Program for Students with Disabilities (PSD), and assist schools and families to better understand a student's educational needs, providing valuable information for a Disability Inclusion Profile. These assessments also support enrolment processes for specialist schools for students with intellectual developmental disorder.

Schools can contact us on 9678 5100 to make a referral if there is evidence that the student is likely to have an intellectual developmental disorder or severe language disorder with high functional needs. We cannot assess students for other purposes, or for other PSD categories, including Autism Spectrum Disorder or Severe Behaviour Disorder.

Referrals cannot be made by kindergartens or parents – please talk to the school the student will be enrolling at to discuss whether an assessment by our service is appropriate.

Please note we cannot take a referral until you have received verbal consent from a parent/carer to share information about the student with us. This includes the name of the person who gave consent, the name of the person it was given to, and the date it was provided.

When you call, we will ask some questions about the student’s history, current needs and presentation. If there is enough information to show the student is likely to have an intellectual developmental disorder or severe language disorder with high functional needs, we will email you a referral pack. If there is not enough information, we will let you know what we need in order to progress to the referral stage. Sometimes the information provided may indicate the referral is not appropriate for our service.

03 9678 5100

Call us to make a referral

When you have verbal consent from a parent/carer to share information about a student with us, you can start the referral process by calling 9678 5100. We will need to know who consent was given by, who it was given to, and the date it was provided.

If there is information to indicate the student is likely to have an intellectual developmental disorder or severe language disorder with high functional needs, we will email you a referral pack. For referrals for intellectual developmental disorder, a link to a digital Vineland-3 assessment will be sent in a separate email within two working days. This will include instructions for completing the Vineland-3 assessment and a Vineland-3 cover sheet to be completed and returned with the other referral forms.

The referral forms should be filled out with as much information as possible to assist us to determine if assessment through our service is appropriate. It is important to use the referral pack that is sent to you for each individual student to ensure the most relevant and current forms are completed.

Once completed, the digital Vineland is automatically returned to us, but all other forms should be scanned and emailed to us at SwD-Assessments@maxsolutions.com.au. We do not need hard copies and do not recommend posting documents to us.

When we receive the referral forms, we will check that all the information we need has been provided. You will receive an email advising if the referral is complete, or there is anything missing. Once the forms are accepted as complete, we will review the information to determine if assessment through our service is appropriate. If we decide there is not enough information to progress to assessment, we will email you with the reasons why we have decided this. You are always welcome to provide more information to us or to call us if you have any questions.

The assessment process

When a referral proceeds to assessment, it is allocated to one of our psychologists and/or speech pathologists. They will contact you by phone or email to set up an assessment date and time that is mutually agreeable. The assessment usually happens within three weeks of us receiving all the completed referral documents.

We will ask you to contact the parent/carer to inform them of the assessment date and arrange an interpreter if required.

All our psychologists and speech pathologists specialise in assessments of this nature.

Feedback after the assessment

When the assessment is finished, we will provide feedback to you and to the student’s parent/carer. This usually happens on the same day of the assessment.

You should invite the parent/carer to attend school on the day of the assessment for this feedback. The assessor will let you know approximately what time, depending on the length of the assessment. Feedback can also be given over the phone if the parent/carer is not able to attend.

It is important that the school contact and/or the classroom teacher also make themselves available for feedback following the assessment.

Details of when and how feedback was provided are recorded on our dashboard, and you are welcome to contact us for further information.

Assessment reports

Once the assessment has been completed you will receive a comprehensive narrative report for parents/carers and teachers. This report will provide information about the reason for referral, the student’s history, previous assessments, and current presentation and needs. It will also talk about the testing that was done, how the student presented during the assessment and their results, and it will provide clear and functional recommendations to support the student.

The comprehensive narrative report will assist the school and parents/carers to better understand the student's educational needs, and provides valuable information for schools seeking to undertake a Disability Inclusion Profile.

Where a student enrolled at a PSD school meets the eligibility requirements to apply for the PSD, you will also receive an attachment report(s), to be submitted with the student’s PSD application.

You will usually receive the assessment report/s within three weeks of the final assessment date.

It is the school’s responsibility to organise any applications for support. Further information is available by following these links:

Your Regional Disability Coordinator can also help you with advice about funding applications and other supports available to schools.