Private Diagnosis - what type of assessor?

Today it was confirmed that the waiting time for my NHS assessment is going to be 20+ months. So I’m back to looking at a private assessment again.

I was wondering if anyone could offer an opinion on private assessments and the best person to be assessed by?

I have found two routes fairly local to me:

1 - A mental health therapist who is an accredited autism assessor who uses the ADI-R and the ADOS (found this person on my local Autism recommendations directory)

2- A Chartered clinical psychologist who uses DISCO and ADOS-2 (this particular psychologist is recommended by someone on this forum)

How do I know which route to take? Are all assessments valid when trying to access support (whether that be DLA, or therapy etc)

As they are private I dont want to spend money and then find it’s not an accepted diagnosis from a therapist for example? (If I am diagnosed that is) Or because they both have autism assessment training does it make any difference? Any help would be appreciated, thank you.

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