If your child needs support with their mental health you can still obtain help and support whilst waiting for their ADHD/Autism assessment.

Please contact our Single Point of Access (SPA) team:

Phone: 01865 901 951
Email: BucksCAMHSSPA@oxfordhealth.nhs.uk

If your child is in immediate medical danger, please call 999.

You do not need a formal diagnosis for support to be in place. A young person’s needs will be the same on the day after the assessment as they were the day before the assessment. You should start by talking to you child’s school about your concerns. They will be able to create a support plan for your child’s needs. You don’t need to have had an assessment or diagnosis for this. Having a plan in place means the school can help with any challenges right away and provide the support your child needs.

You do not need a formal diagnosis for support to be in place. What matters is the child or young person’s need. Your local authority must consider whether the child or young person has or may have special educational needs (SEN) and requires support that goes beyond what’s normally offered through SEN support which may be applying for an EHCP.

If your young person is not already on our waiting list and you feel they would benefit from an ADHD and/or Autism assessment please submit a referral via our Single Point of Access (SPA) team.

Referrals may be submitted by you as a parent/carer, your child’s school, GP, or another professional who knows them well.
We ask that:

No, our Single Point of Access (SPA) team will request information from your family and school to understand if there are indicators or traits of ADHD or Autism in your child’s development and behaviour.

You will be asked about your child’s development including their early development when they were young. Your clinician will ask about symptoms of ADHD and Autism such as

• difficulties with social interaction
• adapting to change
• sensory needs
• hyperactivity
• inattention

You will often be asked to expand on and discuss some of the information and details provided in the pre-assessment forms you have completed, which the clinician will have in front of them.

Each child’s assessment experience is unique to them and a decision will have been made by experienced clinicians based on the information that we have received. This means that your child may have a different assessment process to someone else that you know.

The clinician will make sure that you understand what the next steps will be before you leave the clinic. They will discuss time frames with you, but please ask if things don’t make sense.

Buckinghamshire CAMHS is only commissioned to assess children and young people under the age of 18. Once your child reaches 17 years and 6 months old, we will contact you to arrange for our pre-assessment information to be sent out. You will then complete this and return it, in order for us to be able to book in their assessment. However, if the information is not returned to us by the time they are 17 years and 9 months old we have to discharge or transfer them to adult services. They will then have to make a new referral to Buckinghamshire adult services Autism and/or ADHD teams. If they decide they do require an assessment your child will be subject to that team’s timescales for assessment.

There are a lot reasons why a young person who had been on our waiting list for years didn’t receive a diagnosis. The clinician who assessed them should have explained the reasons for this when they called you after the assessment. The clinical conclusions will also have been outlined in the report document that was sent to you.

If you disagree with the outcome of the assessment it may be helpful to initially discuss this with your child’s education setting to gain their views of how your child is managing. Following this, if you would like to seek a second opinion then please email the team bucksneuroforms@oxfordhealth.nhs.uk. Your request will then be considered by a senior clinician in the team and the outcome of this will be discussed with you within 4 weeks of us receiving the request.

Please send us a copy of the assessment report to Bucksneuroassessment@oxfordhealth.nhs.uk so we can add this to your child’s record.

If the private assessment meets NICE guidelines then we can accept this and an NHS assessment will not be required. Your child will then be removed from the assessment team’s waiting list.

If the private assessment does not meet NICE guidelines, then another diagnostic assessment may have to be completed if they wish to access an NHS service that requires an autism or ADHD diagnosis, for example starting ADHD medication. In these cases, your  young person can be added to the Neurodevelopmental Assessment team’s waiting list if they are not already on it. However, they will be subject to the standard waiting list timescales.

If your child has received a private diagnosis of ADHD and you would like them to be added to our ADHD Medication Clinic waiting list, please ask to be added to the waiting list when you send us the private assessment report to be reviewed.

We have a dedicated Private assessments page where you can find further information on private providers.

If the private assessment meets NICE guidelines then we can accept this and an NHS assessment will not be required. This means that your private provider has applied the same guidelines and standards as an NHS assessment. Schools, universities and employers should accept the diagnosis as if an NHS assessment had taken place.

Please send us a copy of the assessment report to Bucksneuroassessment@oxfordhealth.nhs.uk so we can add this to your child’s record. We will review this and confirm whether or not it meet’s NICE guidelines.

We arrange assessments for children and young people based on the date they were added to the waiting list, so having a private Autism assessment won’t speed up how quickly they are seen for an ADHD assessment.

Please send us a copy of the assessment report to Bucksneuroassessment@oxfordhealth.nhs.uk so we can add this to your child’s record. If the private assessment meets NICE guidelines then we can accept this and an NHS assessment for Autism will not be required.

We arrange assessments for children and young people based on the date they were added to the waiting list, so having a private ADHD assessment won’t speed up how quickly they are seen for an Autism assessment.

Please send us a copy of the assessment report to Bucksneuroassessment@oxfordhealth.nhs.uk so we can add this to your child’s record. If the private assessment meets NICE guidelines then we can accept this and an NHS assessment  for ADHD will not be required.