Hi all,
Hoping for some advice from others who have gone through a development assessment. Our DD is now 30 months. I’ve had concerns about her development since she was 3 months. She has been on the slow end of the spectrum with most her milestones although gross motor has improved lately. But it’s her social and communication which is particularly delayed with not much development until recently. Until 28 months she had limited eye contact, did not respond to her name, did not use gestures (she did wave at one point but stopped and very occasionally gave a high 5 but not at all consistent), very limited imaginative play and imitation skills and did not want to interact with us. She had lots of words but only to label things on a flash card and did not really use words functionally. Her understanding was poor and she cannot follow any kind of one step request. She is always on the move, flitting from activity to activity and can be hard to hold her attention. She is always jumping, even at night in her cot where she could jump for hours in the middle of the night. Occasionally spins when she is upset. New places and people usually result in a meltdown. I did the MCHAT R a few months ago and she scored 13- so high risk. We have struggled to contact the health visitors and had been unable to get her 2 year check done until v recently. Just under 2 months ago after being frustrated at lack of any practical advice as to how to help her I started reading up about speech and language development and after doing very intensive play with her at home, we have had a huge improvement in eye contact (she now makes spontaneous and frequent eye contact), initiating play with us and attempts to communicate with both words and occasionally a full hand point. She still doesn’t understand us and is now showing signs of frustration at her inability to communicate with frequent tantrums. Whilst she is so much better than she was a few weeks back, on her 30 month ASQ she only scores one thing for problem solving, communication & social skills so it’s quite apparent she is lagging behind her peers. We have had one virtual assessment with the child development team at the beginning of year (referred by GP) and are on the wait list for a ‘full developmental assessment’ face to face which they are hoping she will get before the end of the year. We are also on wait list for SALT. I’m a bit confused as to what the development assessment will do. Could the child development team potentially diagnose ASD if they felt she met the criteria or would the assessment just be the starting point and we would have to be referred elsewhere for a diagnosis. I do feel that there is an issue, that it’s shouldn’t have been this hard to start seeing progress but I am now wondering if with her being under 3 and now showing signs of improvement that they would want to sit and wait for another 6 months. Has anyone been through this process and could shed any light about what to expect?