What happens during an OPWDD evaluation?

Evaluations typically last one to one-and-a-half hours, depending on your child’s needs.

During the session, your child may be asked to:

• Respond to verbal questions designed to assess understanding and reasoning
• Identify, sort, or categorize objects and pictures to gauge cognitive and visual processing skills
• Follow multi-step directions to observe attention, memory, and executive functioning
• Engage in age-appropriate puzzles or hands-on tasks that reflect real-world problem-solving abilities

These activities will help the evaluator understand how your child learns, communicates, and functions in daily life.

Evaluators are trained to adapt to your child’s pace and comfort level. There’s no such thing as passing or failing, this is about understanding, not judging.

After the evaluation itself, parents will need to complete an adaptive behavior questionnaire at home. In many cases, you’ll be asked to have a teacher or school staff member complete one as well to offer additional perspective. 

All of this information together will be used to help understand your child as fully as possible.