I am an "autism expert". Ask me anything.

[AutismProf]

Worked in autism assessment, diagnosis and intervention on the education side for 20+ years. Ask me anything.

However, please note that I cannot personally do anything about waiting lists for diagnosis, or the education system, and I won't be blamed for these!

I am paid on Soulbury like most ed psychs. Top of scale , with 3 discretionary points for advanced practice, but without moving to management scales is 57.5k currently. I won't disclose my precise salary.

Training : psychology degree, or conversion course in psychology, then relevant experience (education, youth work or assistant psychologist usually) then 3 year doctorate, then work as a generic EP before developing specialist expertise, usually.

Thank you for your reply, really appreciate it 🙂

Thanks @AutismProf
Yes, my daughter.

Thank you! I also find a lot of helpful information online last night. It looks like my degree wouldn’t be suitable but that it would be suitable for a conversion course so I’d be looking at a long retraining period. I think I could do the conversion Msc with the OU whilst working I think but I have 2 more questions:

1. while doing the doctorate training it seems a bursary is available for the first year but not necessarily for the second and third years. Would there be any flexibility to work part time during these years?
2. I’m almost definitely undiagnosed autistic myself (inherited Asperger type traits). Other family members are diagnosed. I work 1-1 with children in school but I struggle with classroom teaching because of sensory overload and the spontaneous social skills needed for this. Would these traits be a disadvantage in your job?

Thank you!

Interesting thread thank you. I knew exactly what you were trying to achieve with your thread title and took no offence, (as others have mentioned they did).

1. This is new; second and third year trainees are now to be (temporary) employees of the service they are training in.

1. You do need to be able to be personable, make parents feel comfortable (most will be worried when meeting the EP), develop rapport with children, and chair meetings sometimes. If you can do those - even via masking! - then being neurodivergent shouldn't be a barrier, and could even be an advantage, but I would declare it at interview. We certainly have a couple of autistic trainees/EPs at our service.

@MNHQ I'd love to nominate this for a mumsnet classics, because of the EXCELLENT way OP is answering these questions. She is dispelling so many misapprehensions, stereotypes and misunderstandings with kindness and with education. I'm autistic myself, and was very wary of reading this thread. I needn't have been. This should be a resource for mumsnetters to refer to when they have autism-related issues or queries. Thank you, OP.

Totally echo @tattygrl here.

Absolutely fab thread.

Bless her. What help do you have at present? I assume she has an EHCP? Have you had an emergency review, with TAC meeting?

Essentially, you need to rewrite her programme of intervention to make it suitable for where she currently is, not where she used to be.

Start where she is and think about what would be the next step. She probably needs some home tuition, at a very very low expectation level initially. I have successfully used play therapists in this role. You need small amounts of time regularly - 3 half hour sessions weekly better than 1 two hour session, for example. Just get materials that she would have liked before out - playdoh, bubbles, squeezy toys, finger paints, whatever, and have the therapist play with them, inviting DD but not forcing her to join.

You need to think about her programme in relation to the preparation for adulthood areas - health, independence, community access, and education and employment. She needs a new "curriculum" or timetable based on touching each of these 4 areas in an initially very low key way over a week. For example, health and community access might be covered by going to a disability session at a soft play centre or a special needs cycling session - but the first step towards that might be, that she can sit in the garden or kitchen and listen to music/ eat a sandwich with you for 5 mins. Small steps. If she can't manage a step, make it smaller still.

You need a LA rep to support such a programme and commission a person to do the "inreach", and ideally a prof to support the recommendation - a speech therapist or EP. Who has been most helpful in the past? Contact them.
Good luck.

Ah. My father also.
These people out there who "don't believe in labels" have obviously not seen the people in tatters from a life of misunderstanding and being misunderstood.

Tricky question.
Autism boils down to social communication differences. You can be emotional and cry at the drop of a hat, but not experience any difficulties in friendships, the peer group etc.

to be autistic, you need to show heightened interest in a particular area and derive great comfort from it. With girls, the common subjects are often mainstream, but may be askew with the peer group. English literature, horses or animals in general, soap operas, makeup are common ones along with the more "obvious" manga/anime/Pokémon.

What do you mean by "hyperaware of social interactions"? I had a very bubbly friend once who I now suspect is autistic, but masks brilliantly. She is a social butterfly, very popular, but drinks a great deal to cope, and inevitably ruminates on her "performance" socially, so very often the next day, or a day or two later, you'll get a text apologising and saying she didn't mean anything bad when she said X (where X is inevitably completely benign and it hadn't occurred to me to take offence). Her two kids are autistic.

This is a bit of a non answer, sorry!

How did the old ed psych report assess learning difficulties?

I would be requesting a reassessment as either there are no learning difficulties and something has gone badly wrong in your son's education, or in fact there are learning difficulties and that original report was incorrect, and your son has unfair expectations on him.

If he developed until age 7 at a standard pace and then stopped, I would want a medical opinion. Does he for example have epilepsy? Though he wouldn't have seen an EP if there weren't already problems of one sort or another when he was 7, surely?

A bit of a conundrum, but no, it's not common to "just stop developing"!

Thank you.

I think i might ask for another ed psych report based on that. I wasnt present for the first but i think he had to solve some shape puzzles and answer some questions like how are a horse and cow similar.
The test began with a W and the result said he had a spiky profile within a normal range.
But that does seem to have translated to learning.

@Spendonsend
Didn't you say he was non verbal? How would he answer questions?

Sounds like he was assessed on the WISC.

Apols, my misreading. Ignore me.

By hyper aware of social interactions I mean that she is very sensitive to vibes, tones of voice, choice of words etc. She’ll often ask questions about why someone’s voice is different, why they’re grumpy, if it’s about her or something else. Really trying to figure out all the nuances of social interactions.

She absolutely cannot bear anyone being upset. To the point of almost a phobia. She is also very sensitive to TV and won’t won’t watch certain episodes due to them being a bit melancholic. This will make her too upset because she’s so aware of the emotions in that episode. Not anything major, just a cartoon.

This is so different to my other child who is sensitive but not so much around social interactions.

Reddish brown
I mean possibly....if she needs to work out explicitly what each nuance of social communication means....it's like it's not innate, and she doesn't understand if they are upset with her or not? Most people would have near automaticity in understanding that I assume? But it's subtle, so I am not sure, without seeing her myself, what a diagnostic team might make of her.

Unlikely to do harm, but I am skeptical.

Depending on what you mean by symptoms - do you mean core symptoms (triad) or frequent associations (eg gut issues)? I think taking a probiotic and vitamins is probably useful for most people, but since autistic people are less likely to eat a full and varied diet, it's probably a good idea.

I have defined autism elsewhere in the thread so will focus on the second part of your question.

The ados is the best tool we currently have, but it isn't always great. It's really not good for identifying internalizing (often female type) autism. It's rubbish for working with children who have co-occurring selective mutism or severe stranger inhibition (very very shy). It's not great for young children who are verbal, because the second half of the 'beyond phrase speech' module asks conceptual questions about friendships and relationships that would be challenging for any 4 or 5 year old, and then conversely expects the assessee to play with toys, which is deeply uncool if you are, say, a 15 year old.

I personally prefer close school observation in a naturalistic social situation, and one on one work, but that might be because the educational world is my comfort zone.

The ados is very good at looking at how children cope when the social scaffolding we all do is stripped away. That can feel quite uncomfortable, especially to parents watching their child struggle, but it's often very informative (as long as you are male and between 3-13 or classically autistic and doing a module 1 or 2!)

@ReddishBrown my DD was assessed as autistic aged 10 and has that hyper sensitivity to emotions you have mentioned. She struggled to watch any films which all have emotion’s manipulated by music / images etc as they are hugely overloading and she struggles to see between fiction & real life off the screen, she has a pathological fear of a particular cartoon ~ we can’t even mention it’s name in our home or she gets upset. However as she’s got older it’s got easier that she’s watching more stuff now to help her learn and decode the emotional people world around her so she can mask/fit in/understand relationships better especially in secondary school. None of it is instinctive though & she questions everything as part of her learning process. It’s utterly exhausting to be her, and to parent yet repeatedly I get told “she’s not That autistic..” the daily meltdowns would show otherwise.

I am sure this must happen not infrequently and that the adult assessors must have ways around it. I am sorry that I can't be more specific but I don't work in adult diagnosis. I wonder if someone who does, or has been through it, might be able to help?

We certainly wouldn't refuse to assess someone because their parent had died or was no longer in their life. We'd find ways round it.

@AutismProf Dd was dx'd at just two through a multidisciplinary assessment that included 6 weeks at the CDC nursery. She is and always has been passive and very compliant (she seemingly cannot refuse even if it goes against every fibre of her being) When in mainstream her needs were largely unrecognised despite the EHCP, a move to independent specialist where they tried to enable her to have her voice but even now at 20 she will comply always regardless of how minor it would be if she did otherwise. I remember her saying as a tot "Always obey signs and Mummy" I had no idea that it was to be the signature to her life. Do you have any ideas? Her older brother has a more classic presentation and was always more for non compliance and I probably find that easier if I'm honest.

@Cheesybiscuitsmineallmine I was diagnosed in my 40s without any parental involvement. I had written down a lot of childhood/teenage memories of things I had done or felt and things that my parents or other people had said to me that I thought could be relevant. That ended up being enough for the pyschologist

Thank you! So if the second and third year placement salaries are enough to live off this might be a possibility for me. Can I please ask some more questions?

Whats your work life balance like?
Do you work in one place or are you out visiting families and schools a lot?
Do you work in school holidays?
What is the emotional impact on you of the work you do?
Do you feel you are generally able to get children the help they need or do you get frustrated by the system you’re working in?

thanks!