AUTISM ASSESSMENT
All our assessments are in line with NICE guidelines, and they are conducted by a multi-disciplinary team.
It can be overwhelming finding a service you can trust and understanding the differences between the various professionals offering similar things.
We invite individuals or parents to book in half an hour to talk about the assessment process and explain why they are looking for help.
This time is free of charge and a useful space for us to get to know each other a little.
FREE CONSULTion
The first step is to start building up a picture of the person we are assessing. We do this by sending out screening measures to gather as many different perspectives as we can. With permission, and depending on the age of the person we are assessing, we would contact the person’s school or partner and/or parents, as well as ask the individual for some information about themselves. For some people unsure of what kind of assessment they are looking for, it is a good opportunity to establish that we are on the right path.
SCREENING
AUTISM DIAGNOSTIC OBSERVATION SCALE (ADOS)
The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, or ADOS for short, is one of the assessment tools we use as part of the overall Autism assessment process. It is an assessment that can be used with people of all ages, abilities and language skills. It is a semi-structured, standardised assessment of communication, social skills, play and restricted and repetitive behaviours. It enables us to look at how your child or young person communicates, how they interact with us, how they play and their ability to be creative, and also if they have any restricted or repetitive behaviours or interests.
During the assessment the clinician will play some games with younger children or carry out activities including questions about school, friendships and feelings with older children or young people. By watching the way your child communicates, interacts, plays and behaves during the games and activities it helps us to understand if there are signs of autism.
We do our ADOS assessments face-to-face in the Farnham office.
AUTISM DIAGNOSTIC INTERVIEW - REVISED (ADIR)
This is the standardised interview we use to assess for autism. A developmental interview with parents or carers (ADI-R) is done remotely with one of our psychologists who have specialist training in this tool. The ADIR can take approximately 2 hours. Your child does not need to attend this part of the assessment.
Some of the adults we assess do not want to involve their parents or it is not possible to do so, in these instances we can discuss how we can ensure we do as thorough an assessment as possible.
Our team then meet to discuss all the information we have collected. We do not make a diagnosis lightly. If we require further information, we will communicate this at this time. Assuming a confident conclusion can be made, we will send the report out for you to go through.
Our assessments reports explain all of the measures we have used and make recommendations for the future.
DEBRIEF
Our assessments include a meeting to discuss the outcome of the assessment. We can do these meetings in person or meet online.