Autism assessment

[Toad1986]

Hi

My son, almost 4 years old, has his autism assessment tomorrow. We've been waiting nearly 2 years.

Could anyone give me an idea of what the appointment tomorrow will look like?

Many thanks.

Is it the ADOS assessment?

Usually done in two parts, a developmental history with parents asking about milestones, interests, friendships etc, and an observational 1:1 assessment with child.

He's being assessed via one appointment only? seems a pretty short period of time to diagnose a child with a life limiting condition. Or is there more to it than that - what has happened already?

We've had observation from educational psychologist, two assessments from speech and language and a sensory assessment from occupational therapist.
He has a draft ehcp as well.

Can I ask how you went about getting the assessment? My child is 2.5 years old and we suspect ASD due to some major red flags. The HV keeps telling us to just wait

Yeah that's what happens - half an hour and you get a diagnosis 

And autism is not a life limiting condition. It's lifelong, not life limiting.

OP as @SRK16 said, the ADOS is in two parts. My DS's observation took place at the same time as I was doing the developmental history but my son is older. Each session takes 1-1.5 hours. Then we went away for an hour while the professionals who did both parts of the assessment had a meeting. When we went back, I was handed a letter with the dx but it took about 10 weeks for the full report to be sent.

It is very intense and quite emotional because you basically have to talk about all ways in which your child is not developing in the same way as NT children.

Plan a very quiet day afterwards. I was exhausted.

Autism is not a life limiting condition

Apologies for the life limiting condition comment - I did really mean lifelong and life affecting. Hope all goes okay for your son OP