CAMHS - What to expect re ASD diagnosis?

[FlyingFig]

DS has been referred to CAMHS by the community paed (suspected ASD, she suggested Aspergers) and we've got an appointment in February to see a staff nurse. There's an information sheet in with the appointment letter that states that it's an hour long 'choice' appointment and its aims are to:

• Find out what you are hoping for, for your child and your family

• Reached a shared understanding of the main issues which need to be addressed

• Help you and your family make a choice about what would be helpful to you in changing your difficulties and concerns

I'm a bit about it all, really. I'm not 'hoping' for anything (in that as a family we're clueless about the whole thing). As far as I could gather the community paed was referring DS due to her assessment findings and his high score on the CAST questionnaire, so I was hoping that CAMHS would be telling us what the plan is with regards to reaching a diagnosis? Or is that what the letter suggests and I'm not seeing that?

There seems to be so many people skirting around the thought that DS has ASD (school, OT, Community paed) but I'm wondering who actually makes a decision?

Sorry if this doesn't make much sense, I think it's the staff nurse element of the appointment that's thrown as I rather naively thought we'd be heading off for a series of assessments!

Excuse any typos, I've been on night shifts, not at the just yet!

FlyingFig,

Any chance of instead seeing a developmental paed rather than just CAMHS?. I would ask the GP to refer you to such a person, community paed is not always the person of choice here.

I must say an hour long choice appt smacks to me of, "if in doubt blame the parents and or parenting". Also a staff nurse is not the person to see there either.

CAMHS certainly have their place but ASD is not always their area of expertise and seeing a staff nurse there may not be the right person to see. Experience of CAMHS on here described by others is a pretty mixed bag of good and bad.

Thank you Attila - you've summed up my concerns far more coherently that I did

DS's general paed (who he's seen since he was a baby for other things) did say ast summer when this all started, that in Cumbria there wasn't much in the way of ASD in terms of diagnosis and I'm beginning to suspect he was right. We see him next week (to arrange testing for Fragile X) so I will ask him about a developmental paed and if there's scope to be referred?

Feels like we're swimming in treacle at the moment - people throwing at us what they think DS has but with no clear-cut path to a diagnosis. It's so frustrating.

Thanks again.

Hi flying, I wrote a long post out eariler and the stupid phone deleted it, am on pc now so here goes.

As far as I know it is pretty standard, CAMHS work on a tier system so you start on tier 1.
We saw a nurse practioner first who asked us about our concerns and asked us a few questions. It was her job to make sure we had been referred to the right place.

Because she felt that we were in the right place she referred us on to tier 2, there we saw a Mental Health nurse, who asked us a detailed history and talked in greater detail and also spok to Dd3 and got together all the reports from SALT, OT and School.

He fet that Dd3 needed to be investigated furthur so took our case to the Consultant Psychiatrists, they decided if she could go on their list and what priority she was.

She was eventually Dxed by the psychiatrist just under 12 months after the first visit.

I know this sounds really long winded and it might not be the case for you, Dd3 was quite a tricky case because we had no backing from the school and so her traits had only really been seen at home and Brownies.

Things speeded up a lot when we moved her school and they helped us.

We had a generally good if a little slow experience of CAMHS although I was a little disappointed that they discharged her straight after Dx and didn't offer any kind of support, apart from a leaflet about a course.

Hey ho, sorry this is so long but I wanted to give you another view.

Good luck.

Thank you, that's very helpful Hopefully it will be a similar set up here and we'll at least get on the right track.