Our Assessment Process - Combined Neurodevelopmental Pathway
The assessment process consists of:
Family Complete Screening Questionnaire
ADOS-2 Observation, ADI-R & ACE Interview Completed
Online Questionnaires Completed
School Observation (Primary Age)
Professionals Meet for Multidisciplinary Team meeting
Brief remote outcome conversation
Diagnostic report sent to family
Family attend further consultation with professional
Our Combined Neurodevelopmental Assessment 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.
Once accepted on to our pathway, we will request information from your child or young person's educational setting to assist with the assessment process. If your child or young person is in a home school environment, we will discuss this with you. We will also send online questionnaires to parents, educational settings, and to the young person (of secondary school age and above). If the child being assessed is of primary school age, a school observation will be arranged.
We will then arrange two convenient appointments to gather a full developmental history from parents or carers. The appointments are typically completed via video call and will take approximately two to three hours. The first appointment is the Autism Diagnostic Interview - Revised (ADI-R), where an Autism-specific developmental history will be taken. The second appointment is known as the ACE (ADHD Child Evaluation) in which parents or carers are guided through a semi-structured clinical diagnostic interview which explores potential ADHD traits at great depth.
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, then this can also be arranged.
Once all of 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. In addition, the diagnosing clinician will also review all the information provided in relation to potential ADHD traits and will determine whether the threshold for a diagnosis of ADHD has been met.
An initial brief feedback video call will then be arranged where you will meet with one of the clinical team and they will explain the result of the assessments.
At a later date (generally within two to three 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.