Awaiting appointment for CAMHS for Asperger’s assessment for my 13 year old son

Hello , I have been waiting so far 4 months for my son to see CAMHS & to ask for Asperger’s assessment for my 13 year old son.

They have simply told me they don’t know when I will get an appointment & if I am extremely concerned to take him to A&E to access treatment quicker.  To me it seems absolutely dreadful that this is the state of play for  13 year old to get treatment etc. We live in Kent so don’t know if it is different elsewhere in the country or the same.  I was also told going private for ASD assessment & counciling might not be recognised either.

It has been a difficult time which has led to me now home schooling my son & I am at home full time with.  It led to me deregistering him from school, ( as would of been prosecuted or fined otherwise as no medical evidence yet to back up ) he just couldn’t cope with amount of people, noise & name calling etc within school. My son has had suicidal thoughts not wanting to be here anymore & has lack of motivation for anything except his obsession with xbox & creating YouTube clips. He has problems socialising, going out places & stimming which he has done since being toddler ( but never thought anything of it then ). He is bright and above average intelligence which I have learnt is common among people with ASD

.As a mum I have learnt alot these last few months & still learning about treatment, diagnosis self help etc. I have a wealth of info from different organisations EHE , Autism society etc.   It is hard and I have had to Push with healthcare system to just get on waiting list to where we are now.. Any advice or support would be greatfully appreciated, I guess you could say I am a mother who is reaching out but just wish the CAMHS appointment would come soon.

Parents
  • Welcome.

    Sorry to hear about the delays getting your son diagnosed.

    We live in Kent so don’t know if it is different elsewhere in the country or the same.

    The NICE quality standard requires that 'the diagnostic assessment [be] started within 3 months of their referral'. You can see the self-reported waiting times from 2016 here. Sometimes they are different for adults and children (doesn't mention how long assessment takes or how long it takes to get a referral). Some claim as low as 4 weeks; in some places it's more than a year. Medway council & CCG reported a waiting time of 26 weeks, but said it was going to meet the quality standard. Kent didn't give a figure and said:

    At present the 3 CCG consortia are providing diagnosis services with different providers and estimating writing times [sic] across these providers is problematic.  Efforts have been made by all CCGs to bring waiting list down and generally across the county the waiting lists have been significantly reduced over the past year.  The new proposed integrated commissioning post should improve the monitoring of waiting times.

    You'll find other parents who are home-schooling in the 'Parents and Carers' section of this forum. Recently mentioned was the charity Kent Autistic Trust.

  • There is also only currently only 1 support worker from the Autistic Trust covering the whole of Kent. There is no support from any one. I got told that I would be waiting up to two years for any autistic based physcological counselling from the autistic based psychological services. If you have autism Kent isn't the place to be as I am experiencing. 

Reply
  • There is also only currently only 1 support worker from the Autistic Trust covering the whole of Kent. There is no support from any one. I got told that I would be waiting up to two years for any autistic based physcological counselling from the autistic based psychological services. If you have autism Kent isn't the place to be as I am experiencing. 

Children
No Data