News and Blog

Parents disagreeing about the need for exploration/identification of Autism in a child or young person, is possibly one of the most frustrating and anxiety provoking situations that diagnosing clinicians face. It is inevitable that parents will have different styles of parenting, often based upon their own experiences and family influences.  It is also sadly inevitable [...]

The impact of COVID 19 lockdowns on children’s development and the early identification of possible Autism. As a company, we have not historically tended to assess children under the age of four for possible Autism. The reason for this was because, in the past, very small children with developmental or speech delay tended to be [...]

We have received a number of enquiries recently from people concerned about changes to the DSM 5 Autism diagnostic criteria.  For those who are not aware, the DSM, (which stands for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), is the guideline where the criteria for diagnosing Autism are written down. The DSM is the American [...]

This blog is another ‘four years on update’ to a previous blog, as I have realised (a) how much has changed for families since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and (b) how in the last four years, little has changed in terms of universal acceptance of the PDA profile.  It is September again and [...]

This article is an update of our original article written in 2017 – long before we, and our children, were faced with the prospect of COVID 19 and the associated disruptions to school and everyday life.  I am talking about about Autism and anxiety, an issue which has taken on a new meaning in the [...]

In March 2020, when the first lockdown to try and manage the spread of the COVID-19 virus began, many Autism assessment teams across the country were already experiencing a high number of referrals for assessment, and consequently families were experiencing long and stressful delays in getting a diagnosis and the support that they had hoped [...]

This is the title of a new book I will be writing, along with colleagues, and which will include real life stories from individuals (and their families) who have been affected by either not having their Autism recognised or being misdiagnosed.  It has been commissioned by Jessica Kingsley Publishers and will hopefully be complete by [...]

As many people who have attended the various PDA conferences over the last couple of years may know, we as a team, decided back in 2016 to collate all of the information we collect as part of our assessment process, and analyse what we found.  We realised we were in a very fortunate position; we [...]

Adult diagnosis, mis-diagnosis, and experience of parenting for autistic women Over the years I have spent a great deal of my working life as part of a multi-disciplinary team assessing both children and adults for Autism.  When I first started work in the NHS in 2001, we saw very few girls or young women in [...]