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.

Parents Reply Children
  • Better make an appointment then !! :) and hopefully better luck this time ????

  • H&s charge £265 for the initial and then £1505 for the full. 

    Both h&s and the mental health therapist use aq and eq etc at the initial stage whereas the psychologist i saw from somewhere else didnt use any forms.

    i wish i could have told her what i thought she was saying was a load of rubbish but I’m never good with words especially not in person, never mind.

  • What a load of pants!! I make eye contact, it's something you learn to make yourself do (and so does my son). Also, I went to school,college and University. The education thing shows their ignorance especially as people with Asperger's have average or about average IQ (My son got 11 A* GCSE and 4 A's at A-level, so this proves the school thing is a load of cr*p).

    Don't forget that you'll get an initial consultation for £175 and you would hope that if they agree to the full assessment, then they would just be confirming their suspicions, based on the supplied forms (AQ & EQ etc) and the interview???.

  • Yep  the psychologist from another company said you make eye contact and went to school so dont bother with a full assessment!

    autism hampshire have recommended h&s and 3 counties. Just worried about taking the cheaper route and it not being valid or something!

  • Do Autism Hampshire recommend anyone in particular? I vaguely remember you saying you had an initial consultation somewhere and they didn't think you had ASC or did I get that wrong? :)