Do I need a GP referral for a child’s Autism Assessment?
You do not need a GP referral to book an autism assessment appointment with us. We work on a self-referral basis. This means that we take referrals directly from the parents of children who need an autism assessment.
Autism Assessment – Screening Process
The first step of an autism assessment is the screening process. We will send some questionnaires to you and, with your consent, we usually send some questionnaires to your child’s school too.
These questionnaires ask a combination of general questions about your child and any concerns you may have. Additionally, they ask some autism specific questions.
Letters or reports from your GP
If you do have any letters or reports from your GP, the school or any other professional that has assessed or worked with your child that you think may be relevant to our autism screening, then you can send these to us via email to review.
When we have gathered all of the information that we need, we will discuss with you whether we feel it is appropriate to proceed with an autism assessment. This is always a joint agreement between us all.
Is it appropriate to proceed with an autism assessment?
If we agree that it is appropriate to proceed with an autism assessment, then we will book our initial appointment. This is a developmental interview appointment that takes place with one of our Clinical Psychologists via MS Teams.
Your child will need to attend the first 15 minutes of the 2 hour appointment, but the interview is mostly completed by the parents.
Face to Face Assessment Assessment Hertford
We will then invite you and your child to attend a face-to-face observational assessment appointment with one of our ADOS-II trained professionals.
Following the assessments, we will have a professionals meeting to pull all of the information together and agree an outcome. We will then feed this back to you.
If you are worried about making a self-referral, you can contact us in whichever way feels most comfortable for you and we can help you through the process. You can also ask your GP, your child’s school or another professional who has worked with your child to contact us in the first instance if you would like.
You can contact us via our enquiry from here on our website , by emailing us at office@privatechildautismassessment.co.uk, or by calling us at 01707 906673. Please feel free to connect with us on Facebook and Instagram too.