Published on 12, July, 2020
My 11 year old son has been seen by a school Dr, which was instigated by parents and school head. The school Dr said she thinks he is somewhere on the spectrum and he will need to go to a multidisciplinary assessment for an official diagnosis. What we can’t find out is how long this process can take. Our county is Derbyshire.
One of our concerns is, he is starting high school in September. He is already struggling with the transition and past experience suggests this may be a difficult time for him.
being new to all this we are finding some information or decision making difficult. Would anyone on here know what the average waiting time might be or an 11 year old ( we have been told 18months for adults in our county).
There might be an option of a private assessment in August. The clinic have said their assessment team are recognised by NHS authorities, LEA’s etcetera. But we have not been able to confirm this by the relevant departments. The cost is quite high, for us, so we are at a bit of a loss of what to do. I am sure this forum must get these questions all the time but I could not find specific answers relating to us.
Hi There,
We went through the same with our 6 year old. If we had gone through the NHS it would have taken approximately 2 years to get a diagnosis, and at the time, we were really fighting with the school, with them not offering any support for our son, had been sending him home (unofficially) and even excluding him at times, because they could not deal with him, and refused to offer any additional support until there was a diagnosis. We did go private, after a lot of research, and we are so glad that we did. We waiting 3 weeks for the appointment, and had a verbal diagnosis on the same day, with the full report within a week. Ever since then everything has moved forward really quickly, he now has one to one support at school, and his ECHP is in the process of being done, and he has at least 5 different intervention groups.
The only thing I would say, is I have heard that sometimes private reports are not recognised, and this is because a full multidisciplinary assessment needs to be carried out with the minimum of a Speech and Language Therapist, a Psychologist, and a Paediatrician. I think that this is why the wait is so long on the NHS as to get these three highly qualified people in a room together is very difficult.
As long as you have a report produced by at least these three experts, the diagnosis and report should be accepted by all.