Full Assessment - will not having anyone historic to bring be a big problem?

Thankyou everyone for the responses. I sent the consent form back and wrote on it explaining again that I dont have anyone from my childhood.

I will write down a summary of things i remember from my childhood and take it to them. I have also contacted my school but it has been 25 years and they do not have any of my old reports sadly but I hope they will at least understand that I tried. 

Thankyou again :-)

It can take quite a while to remember all of the salient points from your childhood. I went over my entire life history, especially my childhood, in my head with a fine toothed comb for about 3 years before I even asked to be referred for assessment. I had to pick apart all of my memories to find evidence of autism myself before I felt comfortable to ask for an assessment. Try not to rush writing your summary, it needs time.

Yes, I also took some weeks over it. And it was appreciated! If you have any old photos, they might be useful. Even if they just help you to remember. I dug out only a few that were obviously useful. Two seemed to show something that now looks rather like stimming. And I could even quite vividly remember the photo being taken, and my reaction to it being taken; which still strikes me as bizarre (as it did also even then). Viewing those two reminded me of a lot of other behavioural issues. Another photo showed me as a very young club member, in uniform. Not especially enlightening in itself, but it reminded me how badly I fared with the special tests of that club, how dyspraxic I was and how I was often inclined to not conform to their rules; all very much things that tend to happen on the spectrum. And perhaps evidence of ADD.

School & college reports may also be quite evocative. And I even found a newspaper report from 50 years ago that reminded me that my whole year at school failed a crucial exam; despite the presence of people who definitely went on to achieve. That was proof that the local education system had really gone out of its way to be deliberately obstructive. And as a result of that I remembered meeting an old primary school teacher of mine just a few years back, and his remarking that he really couldn't do anything with me. I also spoke to a few people I went to primary school with or played with. All the people mentioned above had no idea that I was heading for an assessment, but reminisced in a very friendly and useful manner for old times sake. Again, they didn't always provide direct evidence, but they evoked further useful memories to include in my report. I even remembered a run-in with an occupational therapist that took a bizarre twist with her informing me she knew what my problem was, but then making no effort to inform me. Doubtless that ended up only in some paper-shufflers filing cabinet and is still acquiring  dust somewhere in a completely useless manner. That left me thinking that I was probably bipolar, which I had already observed in a former colleague. But that memory later proved to be useful to me, And then going back 40 years, I remembered a special needs teacher telling me about her classic autism students; a real rarity at the time. Useful to me because I now see she was beginning to wonder about myself, who just happened to work with her husband.

I treated it as a history project really, and ended up enjoying the process; and it even began me on the path of sorting thru a few issues before the assessment. Take your time over it in a fairly relaxed fashion and you might well turn up a lot of useful evidence.

Yes, I also took some weeks over it. And it was appreciated! If you have any old photos, they might be useful. Even if they just help you to remember. I dug out only a few that were obviously useful. Two seemed to show something that now looks rather like stimming. And I could even quite vividly remember the photo being taken, and my reaction to it being taken; which still strikes me as bizarre (as it did also even then). Viewing those two reminded me of a lot of other behavioural issues. Another photo showed me as a very young club member, in uniform. Not especially enlightening in itself, but it reminded me how badly I fared with the special tests of that club, how dyspraxic I was and how I was often inclined to not conform to their rules; all very much things that tend to happen on the spectrum. And perhaps evidence of ADD.

School & college reports may also be quite evocative. And I even found a newspaper report from 50 years ago that reminded me that my whole year at school failed a crucial exam; despite the presence of people who definitely went on to achieve. That was proof that the local education system had really gone out of its way to be deliberately obstructive. And as a result of that I remembered meeting an old primary school teacher of mine just a few years back, and his remarking that he really couldn't do anything with me. I also spoke to a few people I went to primary school with or played with. All the people mentioned above had no idea that I was heading for an assessment, but reminisced in a very friendly and useful manner for old times sake. Again, they didn't always provide direct evidence, but they evoked further useful memories to include in my report. I even remembered a run-in with an occupational therapist that took a bizarre twist with her informing me she knew what my problem was, but then making no effort to inform me. Doubtless that ended up only in some paper-shufflers filing cabinet and is still acquiring  dust somewhere in a completely useless manner. That left me thinking that I was probably bipolar, which I had already observed in a former colleague. But that memory later proved to be useful to me, And then going back 40 years, I remembered a special needs teacher telling me about her classic autism students; a real rarity at the time. Useful to me because I now see she was beginning to wonder about myself, who just happened to work with her husband.

I treated it as a history project really, and ended up enjoying the process; and it even began me on the path of sorting thru a few issues before the assessment. Take your time over it in a fairly relaxed fashion and you might well turn up a lot of useful evidence.

It's interesting how you say that photos helped to elicit memories from your childhood. I never looked at any childhood photos to aid remembering evidence of Autism. Luckily my long term memory is very strong, I can remember being a baby and I can remember lots of really specific incidences from my childhood in really high detail (side note. Are baby memories an autistic thing? Supposedly, people are not able to remember anything from before the age of two but I definitely have memories from before then from when I was very young! Does anyone else have baby memories?). 

With regards to evidence of autism. I remembered how when I was 3 or 4 I used to spend hours sorting the buttons from my mum's button box into different groups according to colour, shape and size. It was my favourite activity for a while. I remembered how I struggled to make friends right from when I was at playschool. I remember my first day at infant school, I was sat on a table with an older girl at lunchtime. She had a small piece of fluff on her cheek that was really bugging me the entire time that I was trying to eat my lunch so eventually I had to tell her about it. I remembered how I started getting obsessed with things when I was 5 such as hobbies and how although I struggled to make friends I was picked twice in junior school to be on the inter-school quiz team. My Primary school reports always said that I was good at my school work but shy! There is much more, too much to write here.

It was like a history project I guess. Going back over everything to find the evidence that I needed.