Our Assessment Process

Your journey starts with an initial enquiry and a screening stage. This is an important step where we:

• Listen carefully to your concerns and answer your first questions
• Identify the most appropriate pathway — Autism, ADHD, or combined assessment
• Check for alternative explanations to make sure an Autism or ADHD assessment is truly the right next step

By doing this, we make sure you are not put through unnecessary assessments. Our goal is to ensure the process is relevant, efficient, and focused on giving you the clarity you need from the very beginning.

Once we’ve confirmed the right pathway, we gather background information to build a full picture of your experiences. This may include:

• Self-report questionnaires (completed by you)
• Informant questionnaires (completed by parents, carers, teachers, or friends who know you well, or colleagues or managers). We only contact people with your consent.
• For children: contacting the best person at school to complete screening questionnaires and provide a descriptive account of how your child presents at school

Collecting input from different perspectives ensures the assessment is comprehensive and accurate, saving time later by giving us the context we need from the start.

A developmental history is essential to understanding when characteristics first appeared and how they have evolved over time. We draw on structured, gold-standard tools such as the ADI-R, DISCO, or ACIA.

• Children: we speak with parents or carers and combine this with input from school.
• Adults: where possible, we include parents or someone who knew you as a child. If no one is available, we continue with you directly and provide an additional questionnaire to capture further detail.

This step helps us avoid gaps or misunderstandings and ensures we have the right information to make an informed, accurate decision.

You will then meet with our clinicians for a structured, but informal, assessment. We use gold-standard diagnostic tools, chosen according to your needs. These include:

• Autism assessments: ADOS-2 (Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule)
• ADHD assessments: ACE / ACE+ (structured ADHD clinical interview) and QbCheck (a NICE-recommended computer-based test)

These sessions are not “tests” you can pass or fail. Instead, they are designed to help us understand your communication, behaviour, and experiences in a supportive and respectful environment.

Finally, we bring all of the information together to provide a clear outcome. You will receive:

• A feedback appointment (phone or video) to explain the findings and answer your questions
• A comprehensive written diagnostic report, including clear, tailored recommendations for home, school, university, or the workplace
• Where appropriate, signposting to trusted clinicians or services for further support

This means you leave the process with clarity, confidence, and practical next steps — not uncertainty or unanswered questions.