Support in Northern Ireland

Hi,

My son was diagnosed privately at 2 and a half years old. He's now 5 and in P1 (we're in Northern Ireland). We're starting the process at school to get him more support from outside agencies. Support seems to be such an inside club that you need to know what to ask for in order to ask for it...

After we got his diagnosis we got all the usual leaflets and one online zoom about an intro to autism. I've done plenty of reading up since but it is so hard to find info relevant to here and not England or the US.

My son is verbal but struggles at school. His nursery school was useless so we are only starting the process to get support for him now (his senco now is brilliant thank goodness!).

I just feel at a bit of a lost of where to start. We concentrated on helping him regulate and helping with meltdowns up until now, I think we were also naïve about how far behind he is going to be from his peers.

We have referrals in for SLT and OT since October 2022 - the only thing the nursery said they could do. SLT discharged us because he could repeat all the words in their booklet - but his descriptive/ emotional language skills are way behind. We haven't heard anything from OT at all.

We contacted Autism NI and got generic leaflets and intro information.

What other support can we look for apart from SLT & OT? Any groups you could recommend? Any advice on the system in NI?

Sorry if this is a bit long, I just feel a bit lost