Autism Assessments

What Is Autism?

Autism is a neurodevelopmental difference in how a person communicates, interacts with others, and understands the world around them.

Autism Comes with Many Strengths

Autistic people can have wonderful strengths, such as deep focus, creative thinking, and a great eye for patterns or details that others might not notice. Many autistic people have rich imaginations, special interests they are passionate about, and a strong sense of fairness and logic.

Autism Brings Differences, Too

Autism can also mean that someone experiences the world a little differently. These differences often appear in three main areas:

• How a person communicates, both with words and without words.
• How they connect and interact with others.
• A desire for predictability, strong focus on particular interests, and/or unique ways of experiencing sounds, sights, or other sensations.

Our Assessment Approach

At Everlief, we take a neuro-affirming approach to autism. We don’t view autism as something “wrong” or a deficit. It’s simply a different and valuable way of thinking and being. While autistic people may sometimes find social situations, sensory experiences, or communication challenging, many of these difficulties happen because the world isn’t always set up with neurodivergent people in mind.

At Everlief our assessments are conducted by a multi-disciplinary team and comply with NHS / NICE guidance.

We base our approach on that used by the Lorna Wing centre for Autism in Bromley (National Autistic Society).

It is important to note that the assessments can never guarantee a diagnosis. Whether or not a diagnosis is given, the detailed set of reports you will receive at the end will focus on helping your child with their difficulties.

We have three steps to our assessment:

Step 1: Pre-assessment:

1. Phone screening – we will discuss your child to check if this is the right kind of assessment.

2. We will send you a link for our pre-assessment form

3.At this stage the assessment lead will meet you and your child. This would be to go through a general background and to make the decision about whether to proceed with the full Autism assessment or whether a different or no assessment is more appropriate.

STEP 2: Assessment

• DISCO (Diagnostic Interview for Social and Communication Disorders) which is completed with the parents

• ADOS-2 (Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, Version 2)

• School observation and input from school staff, or for older children input from school staff via questionnaire / discussion

• Occupational therapy (OT) assessment with our partner Paediatric Occupational Therapist

• Write up and generation of comprehensive report pack including diagnostic decision and recommendations

Step 3: Post-assessment:

Complimentary follow up appointment to discuss recommendations

Embracing Autism Course - We recommend joining the next course - this holistic course is online with the final module being live.