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My 3 year old has been refereed to be assessed for autism what is the process

mbee

Hi there my 3 year old has been refereed to paediatrics as he has traits of autism etc, his first appointment is next week and wondered what the process is? He is also due to go nursery this year and I feel like he needs a lot of support, any advise from other parents would be appreciated?

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mbee

@Teddybear12 thank you for the links I will have a read on these now 😀

poppy123456

Please be aware that you may have quite a long wait for the assessment. I know in a lot of areas the waiting list can be as long as a couple of years.

L_Volunteer

Hi @mbee. Thanks for finding the courage to reach out to us today.

It sounds like a daunting process for you. How are you currently feeling about the idea of the first autism appointment?

I can see that @Teddybear12 and @poppy123456 have provided you with some resources and information. In addition to these links, I would just like to highlight the National Autistic Society’s website (and their section about the diagnosis process in particular).

In terms of accessing support at nursery, all nursery children are usually given a key worker. This will be your first point of call to negotiate the support as they will work closest with your son. They will likely be aware that all children have different strengths, barriers and support needs. Building a strong profile with them should, hopefully, help.

I hope this helps but if you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to let us know. We will do what we can to support you through this. You don’t have to face this, or anything else, alone if you don’t want to

mbee

@L_Volunteer thank you so much for your kind words, and also the link, I feel ok for our first appointment, but I have been told by other health professionals that my son would be best in special school and I don't know if this would be talked about at the first appointment, I am worried about this as he is due to start nursery in September as I was advised by my health vistor to go ahead and apply for main stream school and hopefully by that time he would have seen an educational psychologist, but we are only going for our first appointment this week and @poppy123456 we have waited 1 year for this appointment is there another waiting list after this?

bg844

My friends son waited 2 years until he officially got the diagnosis. GP referred and my friend received a standard letter ‘we have received your referral’ etc, 6 months later he got a letter inviting them both to an appointment to officially start the process getting basic questions and after that appointment 1 and a half years later they got the official assessment appointment that lasted 3 hours. Report received around a week after that. In my case it was a long time ago but I waited around a year for my own assessment.

It is a long and lengthy process but it is 100% worth the wait in the end with the extra support your son will benefit from, not only will it be easier for things such as DLA (which I know is based on how the conditions effect your son), help in school and other aspects of life. They did look at private but it was quite pointless for them really as sometimes the NHS won’t accept that diagnosis.