ADHD/ autism assessment refusal

[Sux2buthen]

My daughter has just been refused an assessment because the evidence from school is contradictory to evidence from home.
In short she masks her arse off from the start of the school day to the end every day and is a model pupil.
At home things are not good and getting worse.
She is 7.
What can I do now that this has been refused?

I would advise doing a Right To Choose autism referral and if the assessor sees traits of ADHD in their assessment, they will say to you and it can be used as evidence to ask for an ADHD assessment.

I have to leave my child alone after school to decompress. Otherwise we get meltdowns. Making school put support in place has helped as well though. Movement breaks has been a big one for my child. Also warning of any changes to routine.

I have a friend who had the same issue. The whole point of the school questionnaire is to show that issues arise in more than one setting. So she used a dance and drama teacher at the club her dd went to instead.

Could one of you film her when she is kicking off so you have evidence?

I know people who’ve been through the route of camhs, gp via right to choose?
Our school also wouldn’t support , camhs advised to go this route. When we did go through the assessment, I was shown the answers given by school on the questionnaire, and alarm bells rang as it was as if it was about another child entirely,
Sure enough after some probing it was revealed that the form had been filled in by a member of admin staff who had :
a) never met my child
b) never taught my child
c) never spoken to me in 18months of ongoing meetings with school.

it can be a very disheartening and frustrating process , so sympathies!

Also to add, camhs advised us that their own waiting lists were too long to be effective (teenager) hence their suggestion of right to choose. I simply spoke to the gp, and explained it was on the advice of camhs that we were seeking a referral via this route.
our referral was at a fancy private psychologist in the end , but I’m not sure it was the best as it wasn’t particularly local. For people I’ve known whose children were assessed within the camhs system, it was a bit better imo as camhs is v local and therefore they maintain good relationships with local schools / sencos etc and are better placed to implement effective strategies. They also know which schools in the area submit accurate paperwork and which have a history of poor provision for additional needs .That’s just my experience.

As uncomfortable as this idea makes me I think it might be your best shot.

Do you have any school refusual? If you do make sure you document it as such with the school. That would be her SEN causing her to be unable to access her education.

Write everything down, meltdowns/aggression when it happens, how long it lasts and so on. If they're worse certain days of the week ask the teacher what the class do that day, is there more transitions, certain classes she struggles with. Keep raising things with the school. If she has a one off really bad day check in with the teacher about what they did that day too. You might find she struggles more with substitutes, on other teachers if your school doesn't have the one teacher for everything. If she's struggling socially at school bring that up with the teacher to so they know she needs extra support around that. These are good to do anyway as they give you a fuller picture of her needs and what she struggles with, but it also makes you the squeaky wheel until they get the idea.

My DD masks and everything at school only started noticeably falling apart at 11, but we got lucky with her having teachers who had preciously worked in SEN schools and had a lot of experience and understood masking, plus because of all my interactions with her teachers they knew she was having a lot of hidden issues.
She was 8 when she was diagnosed.

Thankyou so much for all of these replies. I am going to go through them and take all of the advice.
I feel for her so much but also for my other children

Maybe not quite the same, but dd initially got rejected from being put on the waiting list for an ASD assessment because there ''wasn't evidence of social communication difficulties". We went to the GP who did an additional questionnaire with us and this got her on the list. I think you really need to advocate. We were told by the school only the 'obvious' cases are being referred for assessment. For girls, that's why they are often missed (myself included).

We are paying for DD to have some online counselling for her friendship issues from a child specific counsellor who is also a SEND Manager at a school. She's offered to supply a letter detailing things she's observed about her. Assessment likely to be Sept 2025 earliest. She's been on the list a year.

I'm definitely going to try the GP next. She's about to start junior school and I anticipate her stress going up soon during the build up.
I have numerous videos and pictures of incidents and injuries but nobody to show them to.
I think because she's literally the quietest sweetest angel at school with no academic difficulty they find it hard to understand quite how hard things are.
I hate to see her struggle so much it breaks my heart.
You're only as happy as your unhappiest child as the saying goes