During an autism assessment

What to expect at your child’s autism assessment 

The aim of your assessment appointment is to identify whether your child fits the diagnostic criteria for autism. The assessment team will work with you and your child to find out about their strengths and needs.

We will not be able to provide specific individual advice and strategies at the assessment, as this appointment is only to identify whether your child has autism or not. However, we will make recommendations about how you can find further information and support after the assessment. The assessment will have a different format depending on the age of your child. 

Your child will be assessed by the Community Paediatrics and Neurodisability Service (known locally as the ‘Ryegate team’). Professionals will select the most appropriate service based on your child’s needs. Autism assessments can take place in different locations for example:

• Ryegate Children’s Centre
• Centenary House
• Beighton Community CAMHS (at the Becton Centre)
• Other location

Your appointment letter will tell you where to go for your appointment. 

The steps of your autism assessment

We will consider all information from the different parts of the assessment to decide if your child fits the criteria for autism or if their profile is best described in a different way. We may sometimes need to gather more information before concluding, such as assessing your child’s learning ability or their language skills.

What happens at an autism assessment (video)

We will offer you a face-to-face appointment where we will work with you to decide whether your child meets the criteria for autism. This may be a multi-professional or single-clinician assessment, depending on your child’s individual needs and the information provided in the referral.

Assessments usually last between 1and a half to 2 hours long and may involve professionals such as doctors, psychologists and speech and language therapists. We will select the most appropriate clinician or combination of clinicians to complete your child’s assessment.

There are two parts to the autism assessment

Taking a detailed history from you, the parent or carer

This will cover information all the way from before your child was born to the present day. We will want to know about your child’s health, their development, and how they play. We will ask about your health and your family’s health. We will ask questions about how your child interacts with others, their communication style, their friendships and their interests. You will have the chance to tell us about any concerns you have around specific behaviours, sleep, eating, anxiety, difficulties in nursery or school and any other worries you have.

Observing your child and gathering observations from different settings

This is done in different ways depending on the age of your child. Members of the assessment team will interact with your child during their assessment and carefully observe for their areas of strength and any areas of difficulty. We gather information from other settings in different ways. Pre-school children may be observed in different clinic settings, during speech and language therapy groups, in nursery or at specific play sessions. For older children we gather detailed information from staff who know them at school through the questionnaires and we may contact their school or do a school visit if this is needed.

Sharing your results

We will discuss the outcome of the assessment with you and talk through what will happen next. We will give you information about any support which would be useful for you and your child. Please see after your autism assessment for more details.