ADHD and meds - how does it work in England please?

[icameonholidaybyaccident]

Hi there. We're Brits who've lived overseas for all our kids' lives. Unfortunately we're divorcing and I'm returning to the UK with the kids in 2022. My 14yr old and 16yr old were diagnosed with ADHD by a child psychologist in Singapore. She prescribes guanfacine and Ritalin. I am also prescribed Ritalin by my psych but he didn't make me do the whole gammut of testing to diagnose, was happy with my self-reporting symptoms.
Having not lived in England for 20 odd years, I have no idea how to continue this treatment there. Can anyone advise? Will we have any chance of getting this prescribed on the NHS or will we need to go private? Will we all have to redo all the official testing before a private doc will prescribe or will their Singapore reports be enough? And what about me, with no report? Any useful info gratefully received. Please don't judge or suggest other alternatives - I'm not looking for that at this stage. Thank you.

It is hard to say, but I suspect you will need a private diagnosis for the DC (and their school teachers would need to do a questionnaire so they'd need to know them) and then you should be able to persuade the GP to prescribe any medication. Waiting lists for NHS diagnoses can be years long. I think it's very unlikely a GP would prescribe to an undiagnosed adult, but possibly a private doc somewhere with a lot of foreign nationals might e.g. Harley St. Might be worth contacting the ADHD society and/or trying their forums.

That's really helpful, thank you.

@Phineyj

It is hard to say, but I suspect you will need a private diagnosis for the DC (and their school teachers would need to do a questionnaire so they'd need to know them) and then you should be able to persuade the GP to prescribe any medication. Waiting lists for NHS diagnoses can be years long. I think it's very unlikely a GP would prescribe to an undiagnosed adult, but possibly a private doc somewhere with a lot of foreign nationals might e.g. Harley St. Might be worth contacting the ADHD society and/or trying their forums.

Many thanks, that gives me a good idea of what's possible.