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Private appointment for diagnosis???

smileforlife

Good morning.

My son age 3 1/2 has a portage worker come to the house once a week and to his preschool once a month. He has one on one at preschool. Portage amd preschool said he has ASD.  My partner will not accept this until a health professional (paediatrition or speech therapist) sees him and officially says yes he has this. Its causing me a lot of problems. Portage teaches us ways of helping our son cope. Brings learning games for him amd lots of visual aids and he responds to well to visuals. He has all the usual asd symptoms. People laugh at him because he copies every word people say. It breaks my heart. My eldest son to another dad has autism. He is 12. But more apparent autism.  We have multi agency meetings every few months to discuss everything. We are on a waiting list to be assessed by the autism panel. Speech therapy and paediatrics. Told it could be two years before he is even seen. I dont want private for paediatric as it would cost over £500 and i was told by gp and portage that it is hard to get a private appointment for this. I have googled speech therapy for private and its about £100 ish. All i want is for someone to say yes he has asd. So i can discuss with my partner and be able to know for sure. The limbo is horrible. I was like this six years before my other son was officially diagnosed and it was awful. At the moment he lashes out at his peers and they all.run away from him and they tell me he is mean to them and they are not his friend. It breaks my heart. If i knew i could say " its not his fault he has autism" to the parents. At the mo i cant. Partner or my mum wont even discuss it. They say its all in my head.  I didnt ask for portage. I didnt ask.for assessments. Preschool did. He starts big school sept. They are aware and are coming to meetings and for a house visit to help him settle in.  

Sorry for talking for ages here but unable to discuss with family its all kinda come out here.  Can speech and language diagnose straight away with the reports i will take from.portage and preschool? Has anyone else paud for private.  Its tearing me apart. Especially no support. Partner says " lets just wait before we say he has anything wrong, hes just babyish, he will be fine in school, he will grow out of it, our fault for babying him".   The list goes on. Been here once and feel like i am here again but with different father saying the same things.

Thanks for listening xxx

  • Hello,

    I have just waited 52 months for my daughter to finally get a diagnosis.

    We had an ados test and my daughter flew through that with flying colours. The Autism team then decided she didn't meet the criteria and removed extra support from school. I wrote to the docors and pointed out an ados is not always the best test for higher functioning cases and eventually they agreed to refer us to the tertiary panel. It took 18 months from that time to get the diagnosis.

    I don't think speech and language can diagnose ASD. With us they completed an assessment, but they then contacted the paediatrician and recommended my daughter be seen by a child psychologist. (Which she never was apart from the cognitive assessment she had) We also had a full sensory assessment from OT and when she rang she told me my daughter had SPD and that she felt we were nearing a diagnosis, but she said she couldn't diagnose that. I think the diganosis needs to come from a paediatrician or a child psychologist. Though I may be wrong.

    Going private was something I seriously considered doing during the long wait, but then I read that most local authorities will only accept an NHS diagnosis and that route still needed to be pursued.

    Maybe try ringing the NAS helpline and see what they advise. I hope you don't have to wait too long, it's absolutely horrible being stuck in limbo and without the diagnosis the children aren't getting the support they desperately need. x