Child Autism Assessment

At The Autism Assessment Centre, we understand that every autistic child is different.

Our assessments are designed to build a detailed understanding of your child - including their strengths, communication style, relationships, sensory experiences, interests, developmental history and areas where they may benefit from additional support.

Our aim is not simply to identify whether your child meets criteria for autism, but to provide families with greater understanding, clarity and practical recommendations for what comes next.

Find out more

Anchor 1

You may recognise expericences such as:

Autism can look very different from one child to another. Some children may:

Find friendships or group situations more complicated to navigate, or prefer interacting in particular ways.
Repeat words, phrases or language they have heard from other people, television, YouTube or favourite characters.
Prefer predictability and familiar routines, and find unexpected changes or uncertainty difficult to manage.
Develop strong or highly focused interests and gain significant enjoyment from talking about or engaging in these.
Use or interpret eye contact, facial expressions, tone of voice or body language differently.
Prefer clear and direct communication and sometimes interpret language literally or find implied meanings less obvious.
Experience sensory differences relating to sounds, clothing, food, touch, smells, lighting or busy environments.
Appear to cope well in some settings while becoming exhausted, overwhelmed or distressed afterwards.
Mask or camouflage aspects of themselves in order to fit in or meet expectations.

Not every autistic child will show all of these characteristics, and some differences may be subtle or less visible to others.

Benefits of having your child assessed for autism:

A comprehensive assessment can:

Help you and your child develop a clearer understanding of their individual strengths, differences and support needs.
Provide an autism diagnosis where the clinical evidence supports this.
Help schools and other professionals better understand how your child experiences the world and what adjustments may be helpful.
Support access to appropriate accommodations, strategies and services where needed.
Help your child understand themselves in a positive and age-appropriate way.
Provide an alternative explanation for behaviours that may previously have been misunderstood or described using unhelpful labels.
Give families practical recommendations and a clearer sense of what may help moving forward.
For many families, assessment is not only about diagnosis. It can provide a framework for understanding why certain situations may be harder, what helps your child feel safe and regulated, and how best to support them to thrive.

The Assessment Process

A brief outline of each step of our assessment process is provided below. Further information is available following your consultation and booking confirmation.

1 | Clinical interview with parent or carer (1 -2 hours)

2 | ADOS (observational interview 1:1 with the child) (1 -1.5 hours)

3 | Information gathering from school/nursery

4 | Additional questionnaires

5 | Review of relevant medical or professional reports

6 | Multidisciplinary team diagnostic meeting

7 | Feedback appointment

8 | Comprehensive assessment report

Worried your child may be masking?

Some children work incredibly hard to cope at school or around other people and may appear outwardly settled while experiencing significant effort, anxiety or exhaustion underneath.

Our assessment process is designed to look beyond how a child presents in one appointment or setting. We consider masking, compensatory strategies, developmental history and differences between environments as part of the wider clinical picture.

Masking does not automatically prevent autism from being identified.

If you are unsure whether an assessment may be helpful, we are happy to talk through what you have noticed and explain the next steps.

Our Fees