Referral process
Patients seen by this service are referred by GPs and mental health clinicians from NHS services.
NHS Right to Choose
For anyone seeking a new referral to our service, GPs may decide to support people to choose from an alternative NHS-approved provider under the NHS Right to Choose rules.
Anyone experiencing challenges with their mental health can continue to access support for their mental health care in the usual way via their GP, talking therapies or Buckinghamshire NHS 24/7 Mental Health Helpline via 111.
We apologise for the impact this will have and we look forward to being open to referrals again in the future.
Requesting a referral
You will be asked to complete a questionnaire with your GP, indicating what ADHD traits you have noticed and the functional impact this has on your life. Your GP will then send the referral to the Bucks ADHD Service.
When the ADHD service receives your referral, we will look through all the documents to ensure that they have been completed as fully as possible.
If there is important information missing, we will contact the GP to ask that this is completed where possible.
Screening referrals
The clinical team will read your referral carefully to ensure we understand your difficulties. The more information you can give us about your symptoms, and the functional impact this is having on your daily life, the better. We will add up the scores from all of your questionnaires and read the text you and your informant have provided.
We will then decide whether or not your information meets the threshold for us to offer you an assessment for possible ADHD. We follow the NICE guidelines when we make this decision.
We may feel that the information you have given us indicates that another diagnosis is more likely, or that another type of support would be more helpful to you at this point.
Whilst we aim to triage your referral as quickly as possible, we are afraid that due to unprecedented demand there is currently a delay with this part of the process.
We will contact you by post to let you know the outcome of your triage process.
Referral outcome
If you meet the threshold for an ADHD assessment, we will put you on our waiting list and let you know we have done this.
As soon as we are able to offer you an assessment, we will be in touch by email or phone to offer you an appointment. Our assessment appointment will be face-to-face at the Whiteleaf Centre, Aylesbury.
We cannot estimate the waiting time at this point, as we are currently recruiting staff to the service which will reduce the waiting times. As soon as we have this information we will update the website to keep you informed.