If you think your child has Autism or Asperger’s and would like a diagnosis, we can help. Getting a diagnosis for your child or teenager can be key to understanding what your child’s difficulties might be and to ensuring they get the best possible support in place.
It is important to get an assessment with a Psychologist who is trained and experienced in diagnosing ASD, to ensure they consider all aspects of your child’s life and other conditions that may be present. The ‘gold-standard’ approach to diagnosing Autism in children is to have several clinicians involved – this is known as a multi-disciplinary approach and ensures a comprehensive and objective assessment.
Before the full multi-disciplinary diagnostic assessment we recommend an initial psychology consultation that usually takes 1-2 hours according to complexity. If your child screens negative for autism, then we would not recommend proceeding to the full assessment.
What does the child and adolescent autism assessment package involve?
At Iris Therapies, the Autism assessment package has been developed based on evidence based best practice and meets NICE guidelines. It is a very detailed and fully comprehensive Autism assessment involving a total of over 13 hours of time by two different clinicians. This involves psychometric questionnaires, face to face appointments and a comprehensive report. As ASD is a lifelong condition (there is no ‘cure’) – we will want to be absolutely certain your child has ASD before offering you a diagnosis.
- Pre-assessment questionnaires – we will ask you and your child’s school to complete some forms that are important in understanding how you child behaves in different environments and what challenges they experience.
- Appointment for your child – your child will meet with a Clinical Psychologist, Psychiatrist, or Occupational Therapist, who will spend a few hours with them, using toys, games and conversation to understand how your child sees the world. Whilst it should be a fun experience for your child, the psychologist will be using evidence based and approved screening tools to assess your child against the criteria relevant to autism.
- Appointment for you – a key part of the diagnosis is understanding your child’s development, which is why you will meet with a psychologist to go into some depth about your child’s developmental history.
- Diagnostic report – following your appointments the clinicians will need to write everything up, using all the information that has been gathered. A full and comprehensive report is written, with a diagnosis (where one can be made) and further recommendations.
- Feedback appointment – all to often parents receive the diagnosis for their child and then are left feeling ‘What is next?’. It’s natural to have a lot of questions, so as part of our assessment you will meet with the Psychologist again to have time to go through the report and ask any questions you have.
- Additonal assessment - At times we will additionally recommend a school observation and/ or cognitive testing which are not included in the price.policies that are particularly important to your business? Perhaps your unlimited paternity/maternity leave policy has endeared you to employees across the company. This is a good place to talk about that