What to Expect in a CareGen Autism Assessment
If you’ve ever been on an NHS Autism assessment waiting list, then you know how long they can be! This is why a lot of parents/individuals are looking at alternative services, like CareGen, to get an Autism Assessment completed. However, finding one of these services is a daunting task (which is why we wrote a guide to going private that you can read by clicking here). This is why we thought it may be helpful to write an article outlining what our assessment processes look like, to give you an insight into what to expect within one of CareGen’s Autism Assessments.
Need more support? Why not book a FREE Clinical Appointment with an Autism specialist at CareGen? Click here to book your appointment!
Free Clinical Appointment
We always encourage parents and individuals to first book in a free clinical appointment to speak with one of our autism specialists. Our main aim is to support families and individuals and to make this support as easily accessible as possible. This is why we offer the free clinical appointments as to provide support to as many people as possible. This appointment gives you the opportunity to discuss your concerns with a trained professional and they can advise you on the next steps, if you decide you would like to go ahead with an Autism assessment.
Gathering Information
Once you have expressed that you would like to go ahead with an Autism assessment, we would then send out forms to parents and school. Once the forms have been completed by both parties, the clinical team will then review the information within an MDT meeting. This is to explore whether an Autism assessment would be appropriate, or if there is something else that may better explain you/your child's difficulties. If the clinical team decide that an Autism assessment would be appropriate, we will inform you of the decision and then advise to book your assessment.
Please note that this is before any payments have been made! Our aim to ensure that an Autism assessment is absolutely necessary before you make any payments. In addition, we always advise our service users to completely exhaust the free options available (whether that be NHS or our FREE Clinical Appointments) before exploring alternative services.
Booking your Appointment
If the clinical team recommend that an Autism assessment would be appropriate, we will send you an email confirming this and then a link to our make a booking page (click here to see what it looks like). We believe that the service user/families should have complete control over when they have their assessment. This is why we at CareGen implement an online calendar booking system so you can choose a date and time that is convenient for you, for your/your child's assessment.
Please note that we now have flexible pay monthly finance for all our services. This is provided by a third-party finance company called Payl8r. You can find information regarding this on the Payl8r website. You can also use the free Payl8r calculator on the CareGen website to see how much your monthly repayments would be.
Autism Assessment
So, we split our Autism assessments into 2 parts: a detailed developmental history and a Child observation session. We offer both sessions online as to stay in line with NHS practices (see our article on why the NHS complete their Autism assessment online by clicking here). All our assessments are completed by 2 or more clinicians present. This is to stay consistent with NICE Guidelines and to ensure that the assessment is of the highest quality. In addition, all our assessments are completed in 1 day (granted a very long day), which minimises parents/individuals having to come back for multiple appointments.
Developmental history
This session is primarily complete with a parent or close relative. Within this session, the clinician will ask questions about the individual to gain an idea of some of the difficulties they may be experiencing. The clinician will also ask you questions going right the way back to when they were a baby, so knowledge of this time would be helpful for the clinician. This session last approximately 1 hour and a half and provides a space for parents/individuals to discuss any concerns they have with in detail, with a trained clinician.
Clinical Observation Session
The second part of the Autism Assessment is the clinical observation session. The assessing clinicians have a wide range of assessments that they may choose from to assess you/your child for Autism (such as the ADOS assessment). The clinician will choose the most appropriate assessment to complete for you/your child. This session usually lasts approximately 1 hour and a half, however this will depend on how much the child/individual can manage.
MDT meeting/Feedback session
Once all the assessment is completed, the assessing clinicians will ask you to leave the online session so they can have an MDT discussion. This is the opportunity for the assessing clinicians to review all the information (from the completed forms to the clinical observation session). Once the assessing clinicians have discussed the information available, they will invite you back for the feedback session. This is where the clinicians will feedback the outcome of the assessment and to be able to answer any questions you may have. They will also discuss the next steps which includes the detailed report that will be produced.
Need more support? Why not book a FREE Clinical Appointment with an Autism Specialist at CareGen? Just click here to book.