Early support is what matters most and you do not need a diagnosis, assessment, or referral to get support. A child or young person’s needs will be the same on the day after the assessment as they were the day before the assessment. It is very likely that they will still need support whether or not they receive a formal diagnosis. So having the right support in place as early as possible is more important and more meaningful than being added to a long waiting list.
Start by talking to your child’s school, nursery or education setting about your concerns. They will be able to create a support plan tailored to your child’s needs, without an assessment or diagnosis. This plan will need to consider your child's needs at home as well as at school. Some children can behave and present very differently in different settings, and for some children and young people their distress may only really be apparent at home.
Putting a plan in place means that your child's school or nursery can help with any immediate challenges and provide the support your child needs, right away.
If your child doesn’t attend school, please speak to a professional (or more than one professional) who knows you child well. This could be a health visitor, speech and language therapist, paediatrician, or CAMHS clinician.
There’s lots of support available for a child who may have autism or ADHD. This is available for school or nursery, and for your family at home, without an assessment or diagnosis. In most cases, it’s the same support you’d receive after a diagnosis. This means your child can receive support as early as possible based on their needs, without needing to rely on or wait for an assessment to happen first.
There are many things that might look like possible autism or ADHD but are not. This can include things like hearing, speech and language difficulties, learning difficulties, depression and anxiety, bullying and emotional worries. So it's important to carefully consider all of these things first, before thinking about requesting an autism or ADHD assessment.
Work through these support strategies below.
There are lots of strategies you can put in place to help your child, which you can find here:
Visit the below pages to find out about all the support available straightaway:
Work with your child’s school or nursery to put in place the support plan and follow any advice you’ve been given. Do this for six months to see if this gives your child the support they need. You may feel at this point that you are much less concerned and that the support plan is providing what your child needs. If that is the case, you don’t need to do anything else.
If, after six months of support, you are still worried, discuss this with the school or nursery. Together, you can decide if it is the right time to refer your child for an autism or ADHD assessment. A referral should be made only after a support plan has been put in place and reviewed for at least six months or two school terms.
There are a number of criteria that need to be ticked off to be able to make a request for help. This includes the child or young person's age, social communication skills, and for how long the differences have noticed. You can talk this through with the school or early years setting, and read the checklists in full here.
If your child meets the criteria above and you still feel an assessment would help, we ask you to speak to the school or early years setting (or another professional who knows them well) to complete an additional information document together, then submit it with our online referral form. Doing this jointly means we get all the right information from the people who know your child best, and can help your child sooner.
You will not be able to submit the online referral form unless the additional information document has been completed and uploaded.
The information your give us will be reviewed and a decision made about the best way to help your child. Because of the number of referrals we receive, this can take some time and we please ask for your patience.
As soon as the review (known as triage) is complete, we'll reach out to share our decision with you. To help our team focus on reviewing all requests, we kindly ask that you refrain from calling the service for updates. Thank you for your understanding and patience.
If your child has an ADHD diagnosis and is already taking ADHD medication, and you would like us to take over their medication monitoring and review, please fill in the additional information form which can be found here.
Please note that the online referral form will prompt you to attach a copy of the support plan. Please attach a copy of the ADHD assessment report instead.
Please speak with your child's school (or another professional that is involved with your child) to support you. If there is no one available to support you, please speak to the ADHD and Autism Triage Team who can help to provide support.
CYPADHDandAutismTriage@berkshire.nhs.uk
Arrange to meet the SENCO, to explain your concerns and discuss how the school can support your child. If other professionals are involved in supporting your child, make sure they are communicating with the school to share their observations and recommendations. If you feel that some aspects of the school day are difficult for your child (even if this is only apparent when they come home), explain what you think is affecting them and discuss what support can be put in place.
Completing the form together will build a more complete picture of the young person across home and school. It may for example show where they are struggling with some parts of the school day but are hiding this in school, and that signs/behaviours of distress only happen at home.
This can often happen and it may be for a number of different reasons. A young person may work very hard to manage the school day, although this may not be apparent in the school setting. This may only be seen at home where the young person may, for example, have meltdowns or shutdowns. The effort to manage the school day can leave young people exhausted and with no energy or coping resources left by the time they get home. This can particularly affect young people who mask or camouflage, and work very hard to fit in.
While the distress may only be seen at home, the underlying triggers or reasons are often things that happen at school. It is very important to understand that, although a child may appear to cope at school, they may be feeling very stressed and distressed, even if they do not show this at school. Arrange a meeting in school so that you can provide important information about sources of stress at school and share some ideas about what support can be put in place to reduce this.
Read more about different behaviour in home and school.
This is the support in place that is above and beyond what would be typical to support a child/young person at this stage of development. A support plan is expected to include areas of need we would typically associate with possible autism and/or possible ADHD. For example for possible autism this would include needs with communication and social interaction, flexibility of thought and behaviour and sensory needs (three key areas of difference).
It would includes any support that has been offered at home, in school or by other services involved. It can include strategies that you have introduced at home as well as strategies recommended or put in place by professionals. Often relatively small changes can make a big difference. Please see our Strategies for supporting communication, sensory needs, emotions and behaviour and Strategies for supporting attention, activity, emotions and behaviour pages for more information.
Generally schools will want to put support plans in place, recognising that early support can benefit all children and young people. The setting or school should use a graduated (stepped) approach based on a four part cycle of Assess, Plan, Do and Review, this will help the school to put in the right support and review how it is helping.
Check that the school know that support can and should be needs-led regardless of diagnosis – no diagnosis is needed to put in place a support plan.
Ask to meet with the class teacher and SENCo so you can explain the concerns you have about your child. This helps to make sure that school have a good understanding of the things that your child finds difficult – this is particularly important if your child is very different at home and at school.
Having some clear specific examples of what your child finds difficult can help. It can also help to share your ideas of the kinds of things that would really support your child and what works well at home. Explain that it would be very helpful to pilot a support plan even if there are few concerns in school, as this will help reduce stress and distress for your child.
You can also get free, confidential and impartial advice and support from your local Special Educational Needs & Disability Information Advice & Support Service (SENDIASS)
The form can be completed by another professional who knows the young person well. This could be a health visitor, speech and language therapist, therapist, home tutor, family support worker or social worker. If you feel there is no one suitable to complete the form, please contact the ADHD and Autism Triage team:
CYPADHDandAutismTriage@berkshire.nhs.uk
Please note, a GP would not be able to provide this information as they would not know your child well enough.
If there is anyone in the school that knows the child or young person, we still ask them to work with you as they will have important information including why the child or young person is not in the school setting. Where a child or young person is not known to school staff, then generally another professional who has direct knowledge of the young person will partner with you.
Please wait for school to reopen and then ask them to complete the form with you. Young people spend so much of their time at school, so staff there are the best people to help us with key information.
A six month period gives enough time to put in place a support plan for the child or young person. Some children or young people may not need a formal assessment after this, as their needs will already be met.
We ask you to work in partnership with the school. Information needs to be gathered by looking back over a minimum period of two terms or six months. This is so we can fully understand the child/young person’s needs, the strategies put in place and the impact these strategies have had. This is referred to as a ‘graduated response’ to meet a child/young person’s needs.
We understand that a diagnosis has multiple and important meaning for young people, and this can be very individual and personal to them.
We will continue to carry out assessments and diagnosis where it is clear this is needed, where there is ongoing impact, and the assessment will clearly add value.
Referrals will be accepted for older children, where there is a high level of psychological distress for them which has not been improved by therapeutic intervention and which appears to be related to uncertainty about a potential diagnosis.
If a child or young person has their needs identified, understood and met, we expect that distress and risk will reduce.
Disability Living Allowance (DLA) is based on the care needs of a child or young person rather than a diagnosis. There is no need to wait for a diagnosis before making an application.
An application can be made at any time if the care needs for the child or young person are significantly more than another child of the same age. This is based on what you have to do, how often you have to do it and how long it takes. This includes care during the day, during the night and care needed in and outside the home.
Please ask your parent/guardian/foster carer and someone who knows you well at school to complete the form. Then either you or they can return the form and complete the online referral form. If there are any difficulties with this, please call us on 0118 904 6620 for help and advice.
Yes, we'll be collecting feedback with every referral so that we can find out what is working well and where we can improve the process.