Autism assessment - what to expect?

[onedayatatime73]

Bit of a long story so will summarise but essentially DD8 school suggested she should be assessed for autism. We paid for a private assessment to speed things up. It was a bit of a surprise because they hadn't mentioned anything before. We have seen the forms the head and class teacher filled out. Again we were a bit surprised as they stated things that they hadn't told us before, and was completely contradictory to feedback at parents evening / comments in school report. Anyway, the in class observation / assessment was carried out 2 weeks ago and next week we have zoom meeting with the assessor for her feedback / diagnosis. Can anyone let me know what to expect? Ie if she is autistic do they give a scale? Do they give us parenting advice or techniques to use? It's all happened rather quickly so I'm just a bit in the dark with it all.

DD is the same age and we paid privately for an assessment recently.

The final zoom meeting was fairly informal, confirmed the diagnosis and the headlines of the recommendations (mainly around her anxiety which is fuelled by the ASD) and that they recommended we also looked into ADHD as well. Haven't had the full report yet, but it was very much a "we discussed it and yes, we feel she meets the threshold for a diagnosis" yes/no situation.

Bit of advice I'd give - set yourself some time aside to mentally process it if you need to - I'd got my head around it all before now so it was OK - but some parents really need more processing time than others and remember that whatever happens - she's the same kid that evening that she was that morning really.

How long did the assessment process take @CoffeeWithCheese ?

My 8 nearly 9 year old son was referred to CAMHS over a year ago and we are still waiting. I am wondering about going private as his self esteem is really low at the moment. How much does it cost? And will schools accept the diagnosis?