Autism Assessments for Children and Young People (5-17 years old)

The Edinburgh Practice offers ‘gold-standard’ autism assessments for children, ensuring that families can access expert clinical support for their children and teens in a timely manner.

A screening consultation with one of our Clinical Psychologists can be helpful if you feel unsure whether your child might need a full neurodevelopmental assessment, or if you feel unsure which assessment may be best suited. Our screening consultation is one hour long and can be offered in person or remotely. During the appointment our Clinical Psychologist will carry out a structured clinical interview, in line with best practice guidelines, to assess mental health and neurodiversity. Alongside the clinical interview, our clinicians incorporate relevant validated clinical tools which are suited to individual clinical needs, for example to screen for autism, ADHD and mental health difficulties. At the end of the appointment, our clinician will then make personalised recommendations, including the next best steps for your child.

All recommendations will be based on clinical needs and may include:

• Recommending a neurodevelopmental assessment i.e. an autism, ADHD or combined assessment
• Recommending psychological therapy to address mental health difficulties
• Recommending a psychiatry consultation to address mental health difficulties

If you are happy to proceed with our clinician’s recommendations, the relevant internal referral can be arranged.  Our clinician will summarise the consultation in a letter which can be sent to your child’s GP.

Autism is diagnosed by gathering evidence from the young person, their family and by completing a clinical assessment.  As a team we gather information from different sources to determine whether the child/young person meets the diagnostic criteria for autism or whether their presentation can be better explained by something else, for example, anxiety or learning difficulties. Our autism assessments for children are led by our multidisciplinary team of clinical psychologists, occupational therapists and a specialist speech and language therapist. In order to provide a ‘gold-standard’ service, we have chosen to use a range of clinically recognised tools. Below is a guide of how our assessments typically proceed.

Stage 1: Initial Consultation

The first stage of our assessment process involves an initial consultation. The purpose of this consultation is to give you the opportunity to meet with a member of our team to discuss your child’s presentation and provide some details about your child’s developmental history. Where applicable, both parents or carers and the young person should attend this meeting which will last approximately one hour.

Following this initial consultation, if full assessment is indicated, our team will contact your child’s nursery/school to gathered detailed educational information and ask the staff who know your child well to complete questionnaire(s). This information is vital to the diagnostic process.

Stage 2: The Core Assessment

As parents/carers, you will be asked to complete a Developmental History questionnaire and meet with a member of our team to discuss the details of this and and the current concerns you have without your child. This is a standardised interview which includes in-depth questioning relating to your child’s early years and developmental history. It is a gold standard assessment tool and is recommended in current national guidelines.

Your child will also attend the practice to complete the ADOS-2 assessment for Autism. This is a semi structured, standardised assessment which is designed to identify behaviours that are typically related to a diagnosis of Autism.  This is also a gold standard instrument recommended in current national guidelines. This play-based observational assessment involves your child playing with specific toys and undertaking various tasks with a member of the team whilst their interaction is being observed by another team member.

Stage 3: Diagnosis

Following the completion of these assessment processes, the team meet to discuss the information that has been gathered during the assessment process.  The information is mapped onto the DSM-V criteria for Autism and a decision is reached regarding diagnosis.  If all information is available, the team would hope to feedback to you within 14 days of the clinic assessment.

In some cases, further assessment may be required if it is determined that further clarification and observation would be useful to the assessment process. Examples include a nursery/school observation, an additional speech and language assessment, or a review by a child psychiatrist.  If this is the case then the rationale and timing for the further assessment will be discussed.

Report & recommendations

Following completion of our assessments a written diagnostic report will be completed. We will aim to have this report finalised approximately 4 weeks after completion of our assessment.

Stage 4: Post-assessment Support Meeting

Whether or not your child receives an Autism diagnosis, we understand that the process and outcome may have been challenging for you as a family. Receiving a positive Autism diagnosis for a child can feel overwhelming, and each individual will have differing emotions following the diagnosis. Equally, parents of children who do not receive a diagnosis and where the origin of their child’s difficulties appear to point elsewhere can also feel overwhelmed and unsure as to what to do moving forward. For this reason, we have structured in a ‘follow-up’ meeting, approximately one month after your child’s assessment. This meeting allows you the opportunity to go through the report and clarify on any outstanding queries. Whatever the outcome of the diagnostic assessment, you will be provided with practical resources and recommendations that may be helpful for you and your family.