Our Assessment Process
The assessment process consists of:
Family Complete Screening Questionnaire
ADOS-2 Observation & ADI-R Interview Completed
Professionals meet for Multidisciplinary Team meeting
Brief remote outcome consultation
Diagnostic report sent to Family
Family attend further consultation with professional
Our Diagnostic Pathway
After making an initial enquiry to our service, we will ask you to complete a screening questionnaire, which provides us with some preliminary information about your child or young person. Once completed, the questionnaire will be reviewed by our clinical team and we will get back in touch with you to advise if we are able to proceed with the assessment.
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Once accepted onto our pathway, we will request information from your child or young person's educational setting to assist with the assessment process. If you child is in a home school environment we will discuss this with you.
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We will then arrange a convenient appointment to gather a full developmental history from parents or carers. This is typically completed via video call and takes in the region of 2 to 3 hours. The developmental history is known as the Autism Diagnostic Interview - Revised (ADI-R).​
​We will also arrange a face-to-face appointment with your child or young person, during which the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule 2nd Edition (ADOS-2) will be administered. When booking this appointment with you, one of our clinicians can answer any questions that you might have about the assessment. The ADOS-2 typically takes between 45 minutes to an hour and will ideally take place at your home address. If you prefer for the observation to take place at a clinic location this can also be arranged.
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Once both the appointments have taken place a Multidisciplinary Team (MDT) meeting will take place. In this meeting, the clinicians involved in your child or young person's assessment will have a lengthy clinical discussion to determine whether the threshold for a diagnosis of autism has been met. Once an outcome has been reached, our clinicians will prepare a full diagnostic report which will include recommendations for your child or young person.
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An initial brief feedback video call will then be arranged where you will meet with one of the clinical team where they will explain the result of the assessment.
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At a later date (generally within 2 to 3 weeks), once you have had the chance to fully digest our report and have had time to consider the outcome, a post-diagnostic feedback video call will be arranged for you to ask any questions that may have arisen.