Autism Assessment

We provide the international gold standard assessment for autism for ages 3-18.

Our assessment process includes interviews and questionnaires with whanāu, observation of your child, The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS-2), and interdisciplinary consultation.

Our Autism Assessment Process

    • One of our assessors will meet with you for one to two hours to learn as much as possible about your current concerns, the young person’s development, strengths, interests, challenges and educational history.

    • Based on the information gathered from you, the psychologist may also give you standardised assessment questionnaires to be filled out by you or by the young person’s teacher.

    • One of our assessors will spend time with the young person and interact with them through a structured, empirically validated assessment called the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS-2).

    • This assessment is designed to assess the young person's social and communication skills. It will take approximately one hour.

    • The assessor will meet with our interdisciplinary team, which includes a child and adolescent psychiatrist, speech and language therapist and psychologist, all specialising in autism, to review the information gathered and analyse the data.

    • The team will formulate their diagnostic impressions, feedback and recommendations for the report.

    • The team may recommend further evaluation using more specialised tools to support the assessment process.

    • The assessor will write a report summarising all of the information gathered and the conclusions based on the standardised assessment measures and clinical observations.

    • They will meet with you to talk it through and will provide you with recommendations regarding the next steps for you and your child based on the outcomes.

 FAQs

    • The first meeting with you will take between 1-2 hours.

    • We will then observe and interact with the young person which will take approximately 1 hour.

    • Following this, the assessor will consult with our interdisciplinary team before writing a report and meeting with you to discuss the report. This feedback meeting will take approximately 1 hour.

    • You will receive a written report which will be finalised within one month of the first assessment session.

    • We will talk through the report, and our recommendations and answer any questions you might have.

    • We will do everything we can to adjust the tasks in the assessment to the young person’s needs.

    • This may include splitting the assessment into two shorter sessions or having regular breaks throughout the session.

    • Our clinicians are experienced with reading and responding to a young person’s cues.