Dc3 hospital referral has been rejected

[elliejjtiny]

Dc3 is 13. We have suspected he has adhd for a while and the school agreed. The school also suggested he has autism too. We already have 2 dc with autism so we have a very autism friendly house with visual timetables etc. School spent ages and so did I getting the referral form done right. It was sent off in December last year and we were expecting him to be seen about 2 years after that.

Today we got a letter from the hospital saying they have had a multi disciplinary meeting and have rejected dc3's referral. They have said there is not enough evidence of support in school (I disagree with this) and that there is no evidence that dc3 wants to be assessed. Dc3 is 13 and has the attention span of a gnat unless it's to do with star wars, of course he isn't interested in being assessed. School are restricted by lack of funding but they have put loads of support in place which was all detailed on the form.

I'm so upset with this and feel like I've just been told I'm making up all his problems, and to top it all I'm worried that the dla form I sent off for him 2 weeks ago will be rejected as well. The referral form that the school did was my evidence and if that wasn't good enough for the hospital I'm thinking it won't be good enough for the dwp either. I was really hoping we would get dla for him so we could spend it on activities to wear him out so he will hopefully sleep through the night.

They routinely bat back any referrals which aren’t robust enough. You need to work with school and your GP to build a more robust referral. Don’t lose heart, you’ll get there, but school need to really build a stronger case for you.

Where are you in the country?

It’s unusual for a 13 yr old to be referred into hospital for ASD/ADHD assessment it would normally be to CAMHS. I only raise because there are some children’s hospitals which do accept referrals but they tend to be for the most complex cases (and hence why your child might have been rejected).

Thank you. We're in Somerset. The normal way of doing things here with School aged children is that the school fill in a referral form and then it goes to a team at the hospital (can't remember what they are called) who either reject the referral or accept it. Then if the referral is accepted the child goes on the 2 year waiting list to see a community paediatrician who then decided whether or not to refer for an assessment. My ds2 saw Camhs a few years ago when he attempted suicide and the man from Camhs said then that Camhs don't do autism assessment in our area.

Just been through the referral again and although there is a lot of info about the support they are giving him, the child's views but has been left blank.

@elliejjtiny that’s interesting and theoretically a good idea in that you look more holistically at a child (and so if there are physical problems they will be dealt with); however, I imagine you then don’t get specialists reviewing who then don’t understand masking etc. (My friends daughter (under 5 so under hospital team) was recently refused an ASD assessment because “school said she was fine in the classroom and that can’t be the case with an ASD child” (this is despite school also saying the child can’t cope in the playground and struggles to socialise).

The point about your son not showing enough interest in being assessed is ridiculous (irrespective if section not filled in). He’s a child, if he was “behaving” badly, going to be expelled and attacking people would they still go and refusing to be assessed would they say, “sorry he’s got to want to be assessed”.

Also the school not showing evidence of enough support - so if your child was in a terrible school that just left him in the corner he can’t be assessed? Surely it should be the opposite? If a child possibly is ND but ok at school with support then there maybe is an argument about if they need to be assessed, but if they don’t have support then surely more reason to assess?

I would arrange a meeting with school and see if they are happy to put the referral back in (possibly with a letter dealing with the point raised) and also making the section with your son’s views are complete.

I’m presuming private is not an option? Not that you should have to do this but obviously even if you get referred you are 2 years before an assessment.

OP also please don’t think you are making things up. School have supported the assessment - they would absolutely not do this if they didn’t agree there were issues.

Our youngest was rejected (textbook adhd) saying not enough school evidence but they hadn’t contacted the school. It was our GP referring. GP was outraged and complained. Our eldest had been put forward for assessment (far fewer symptoms) because of the genetic likelihood due to their dad’s adhd. It was annoying that one child was approved for assessment due to genetic likelihood and the other was rejected outright . Can’t get the school to call us back about this so our kid suffers on. We were offered triple p parenting help but we don’t have an issue with his behaviour - it’s our son who find it challenging and he hates it.

My DD now 14, we had to go through so many things to gather evidence. The best thing we did was to voluntary have a support worker for her. The support worker saw everything for herself and documented it professionally. This massively helped us down the line. It pushed through the Peadiatrician appointment and Qb/Autism pathway. First port of call was the GP though. She had big issues with anxiety and suffers with sleep so we already had prior issues on the records before a referral was made.

I will say, the Qb text for ADHD is not what I expected. But it monitors reactions, movement and responses to images on the screen.

Thank you everyone. I will contact the senco in the morning and hopefully we will be able to get the ball rolling again. I asked him today if he wanted to be assessed and he said he wasn't bothered and then asked if he would get the day off school. We have treated him as if he has asd since the school suggested it and he has the maximum amount of support he can get at school without an ehcp so to him I don't suppose being diagnosed would make much difference.

Just updating saying I spoke to the senco today. She was very surprised that the referral was turned down. She is going to look through the referral again and then set up a meeting to talk about appealing the decision.