Specialist ADHD assessment for children and young people
ADHD Assessment Overview
Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is understood as a neurodevelopmental condition, often seen in difficulties across areas of attention, activity and impulsivity. While these characteristics are part of the diagnostic criteria, it's important to recognise that they manifest differently across individuals and life stages, and there could be many different explanations for difficulties in these areas.
For children and teenagers, an ADHD assessment can be a crucial step in understanding their unique experience. It helps ensure that caregivers, teachers, and peers acknowledge why some things might come harder for them, and some things easier. Our assessments aim to capture their strengths alongside their difficulties, to support a broad understanding of your child. Our view is that when an environment is tailored to foster their strengths and accommodate challenges, children with ADHD can flourish. Unfortunately, a common occurrence for those without this understanding and support can be consistent experiences of negative feedback that can impact their emotional wellbeing and engagement with learning.
A diagnosis could help clarify past experiences, support active changes to education provision, or simply satisfy a personal curiosity. An assessment serves not to define an individual, but to offer insights, a language, and a deeper understanding to go forward in their lives.
What’s Involved?
Information gathering - with your permission, the clinician will contact the network around your child (family, carers, school) to hear the areas of concern, share screening questionnaires, and identify appropriate psychometric instruments to gather an accurate picture of your child’s strengths and weaknesses.
Meeting with the child - a specialist clinical psychologist will meet your child directly for approximately 2 hours. They will play or talk with your child, asking them questions but also observing their behaviour in the session. During this meeting, the child will also complete a learning assessment to better understand their ability.
Parent meeting - a specialist clinical psychologist will meet with the caregivers for an in-depth interview to gather more information about their perspective and understand more about how things are at home.
ADHD Report - once we have gathered all of the necessary information, the clinical psychologist will put it all together and write a comprehensive report. This will detail the assessment outcome, with recommendations and a plan made for the next steps.
Feedback session - after reading the report, you will have a 1 hour feedback session with the clinical psychologist, where you can ask questions about the report and plan for further support if it is needed.
Why choose a specialist assessment?
If you have concerns about ADHD, you have likely come across lots of different services claiming to offer a diagnosis for your child and sometimes at a lower cost than others. This can be tempting, but it is important to review whether the service is following best practice and is of a standard that is recognised by medical and education systems.
Our assessments are completed by a qualified clinical psychologist, trained at doctoral level and accredited by the HCPC. They follow guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), which sets out how NHS services offering ADHD assessment should complete them. You can be confident that our assessments meet this ‘gold standard’ and are likely to be accepted by other institutions. Our comprehensive reports also record all aspects of the assessment process and include all the necessary detail needed for organisations to review their quality. The report can also contribute to a child’s Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) if required.
The assessing clinician will take a broad view of your child and will look at other likely factors contributing to their difficulties, including a learning assessment, common mental health difficulties and neurodevelopmental conditions.
Fees
The package of support can vary depending on your child’s needs, so please get in touch to discuss what options are available. The total fee will include liaison with the network and information gathering with the school, assessment with your child, parent interview, report writing and feedback.
Contact
If you have any further questions about whether an assessment is suited to your child’s needs, or you’d like to enquire about arranging an assessment, please use the form below: