Our Child and Young Person Service

Cornwall Autism and Neurodevelopment (CAN) offer families two autism assessment options for children from 3 years of age to choose from; face to face or hybrid assessment – both of which can be tailored to fit your child’s needs and have their own benefits which we detail below. If additional assessments are required such as those that assess for ADHD, Learning Difficulties, Developmental Coordination Disorder, Sensory Processing Difficulties or Language Disorder an additional face to face session will be offered.

    • EASY SELF-REFERRAL FOR OUR ASSESSMENT

      • Simply contact us via our contact form or email to refer your child for a private ASD assessment from Cornwall Autism.

      FREE INITIAL  SCREENING

      • We will then email the parent/guardian a form so you can let us know how your child presents at home.
      • We will ask you to send us any other reports you have about your child from health or education professionals
      • We will also email you a form to pass onto school so we can consider their observations of your child in the school setting (if your child is not in school information can be gathered from another professional who knows them).
      • We will email you a link for the Social Responsiveness Scale – 2 (SRS-2), an online standardised ASD questionnaire.
      • Once all this information is returned we will hold a screening meeting and then get in touch with you with our thoughts.
      • If at this point we do not think an assessment from Cornwall Autism is right for your child, for instance if there is not enough evidence of ASD or if we feel alternative support would be in the best interests of your family we will signpost you to appropriate services, including local NHS and council support. 
      • If we all agree that an independent ASD assessment could be helpful we will arrange a date and time that is convenient for you for the next stage of our assessment.

      THE MULTIDISCIPLINARY ASSESSMENT

      • Parent/Guardian Interview  We will arrange a time to meet with you either online via a secure video platform or face to face to gather information on your child’s presentation and to get a detailed developmental history.  This assessment can take up to 3 hours.
      • ADOS Assessment  This will take place at our clinic room at the Health and Wellbeing Innovation Centre, Truro, or at Market Hall, Devonport, Plymouth. We will spend a few minutes initially with you all together to introduce ourselves and ask you all some general questions. We will then ask you to separate from your child and wait in the comfortable waiting area whilst one of our clinicians spends time with your child. If you are worried that your child will not be happy to spend time alone with a clinician you can stay with your child; we would just ask that you do not participate in the discussions or assessment tasks as the ADOS tool is standardised on the 1:1 interactions between clinician and young person, and it is important that we are able to see how your child engages with our clinician without the influence of other people.
      • If your child is under 5 years old they may also have a review by our Consultant Paediatrician, this is often done at the same time as the ADOS.

      THE MULTIDISCIPLINARY DIAGNOSTIC MEETING

      • Once both assessments have taken place we will then hold multidisciplinary diagnostic discussions during which our observations, and the information you and your child’s school have provided are considered using the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM5) to determine whether your child meets the criteria for a diagnosis of ASD.

      LETTING YOU KNOW THE OUTCOME

      • We will phone you with the outcome of your child’s assessment within a week of the final assessment session.
      • We will email you a detailed report including recommendations and signposting.

      FEEDBACK

      • Finally, we offer you a feedback meeting, this takes place online with one of our experienced clinicians and is an opportunity for you to ask us any questions about the assessment, report, recommendations and next steps.
      How much for an ASD assessment?
    Please do get in touch if you have any questions or would like to arrange a private Autism assessment for your child.