Autism Assessment
Step 1 – Screening appointment
Initially, you and your child will be invited to a 2 hour screening appointment, during which you will complete a range of questionnaires, and your child’s strengths and interests, emotional health, physical health, family history, social circumstances, academic skills, and neurodevelopmental needs will be discussed.
Information will also be sought from your child’s school through a questionnaire. After this session, you will be invited to a feedback appointment, where the outcome of the screening will be discussed. This will either lead to a full diagnostic assessment, or recommendations for further psychological assessment/therapeutic support.
If a full diagnostic assessment is not considered most appropriate at this stage, I will provide a report in the form of a letter to you which includes a working understanding of your child’s difficulties and further recommendations.
Step 2 – Structured autism-specific parental interview
This will involve a detailed conversation about your child’s development, which typically lasts for approximately 4-5 hours, and may be split into several appointments. During this time, we will consider your child’s early developmental history, their educational experiences, and whether they show differences that are consistent with autism. This will also involve considering whether your child’s difficulties could be explained by, or co-occur with, other neurodevelopmental differences, mental health conditions, or psychosocial factors. Afterwards, reports from any other professionals will be reviewed, to incorporate their conclusions into the assessment.
Step 3 – Play-based assessment
This will involve your child taking part in a range of activities to understand their social communication skills, which last between 1-1.5 hours, and typically involves using a play-based assessment called the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS-2).
Step 4 – Assessment of cognitive skills and adaptive functioning
I will work with your child to complete a structured assessment of their thinking skills, called the WISC-V. This involves them engaging in a number of puzzles and tasks, which lasts approximately 1.5 hours. This can help to understand their strengths and weaknesses in terms of working memory, language comprehension, processing speed, logical reasoning, and visual-spatial skills. I will also ask you to complete an assessment of your child’s communication, daily living, and social skills.
Step 5 – Feedback and report
This will involve integrating the information gathered from the assessment into a detailed report, which will include a psychological understanding of your child’s strengths and needs, together with a diagnostic opinion regarding whether their differences meet the criteria for a DSM-V diagnosis of autism. We will then meet for a 1 hour feedback session, where I will explain the outcome of the assessment, alongside the recommendations, and we will have a chance to discuss the formulation and your child’s support needs.
To arrange a brief 20 minute call to discuss your needs, please contact me by email in the first instance:
