- Home /
- Kids Clinic /
- Assessment /
Autism Spectrum
Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition, meaning your child experiences the world differently. By detecting Autism early, we can improve a person’s quality of life and offer valuable, practical upport to parents, family, friends, and teachers, so they can better understand your child's unique differences.
About this assessment
In the early years of your child’s life, their brain is making more connections than at any other time in their lives. They’re developing communication, motor, social, emotional and thinking skills that they’ll carry with them for life.
While most children will meet their developmental milestones within a typical timeframe, there can be wide variations in when your child masters these skills. If you’re concerned about your child’s development, an early assessment can provide a comprehensive understanding of what factors are contributing to this delay and what strategies we can use to better support your child.
Designed for:
- Pre-schoolers (18 months to 5 years), primary school aged (6-12 years), adolescents (13-16 years)
- Diagnoses: Autism Spectrum and other co-occurring conditions
- Can provide further information about co-occurring conditions like anxiety, depression, sleeping or eating problems.
Gain clarity on your child’s unique needs
Ready to gain a better understanding of your child and access appropriate strategies, interventions and support from our multidisciplinary team?
With an Autism assessment, your child can learn more about themselves to shake off critical thoughts ‘I don’t fit in’, to accepting themselves and feeling confident in their unique identity. Raising neurodivergent kids often requires extra support to manage the unique needs of your children. With an assessment and diagnosis, you can gain the additional support and guidance you need as a parent.
A comprehensive approach leads to better outcomes
This assessment is also a valuable way to access the appropriate accommodations and services your child might need—such as what school exam provisions might be helpful, any allowances for the use of sensory tools and what therapy might be useful, from psychology to speech or even occupational therapy.
This assessment at a glance
Enquire
An intake coordinator will assess your concerns and walk you through the best assessment for your child’s needs. This may be a single clinical assessment (if there are only one or two areas of concern) or a multidisciplinary assessment (if your child is navigating multiple concerns, like communication difficulties, emotional outbursts and social differences).
Pre-assessment questionnaires
We’ll share an intake questionnaire for you and your child’s educators to complete to assess specific areas of concern (such as social-emotional functioning and adaptive behaviours).
Assessment day
The assessment day (3-4 hours) involves activities and observations with your child. We’ll begin together to help everyone settle in and clarify the goals of the assessment. During our time together, we’ll use play-based, age-appropriate activities and use the Autism Diagnosis Observation Schedule (ADOS) as well as other measures based on your child’s needs. We’ll make sure your child has a break while we interview you using the standardised Autism Diagnostic Interview – Revised (ADI-R). We also use alternate methods of assessing Autism where there may be different needs, such as assessing Autism in girls.
Functional capacity assessment
We’ll ensure we understand your child’s abilities across several areas (such as communication, daily living skills, motor skills and social skills) to assess functioning holistically.
Multidisciplinary team results review
Our team will review the assessment results, and if your child meets certain criteria, a diagnosis will be made. Factors contributing to the presenting concern will be addressed.
Feedback session
We’ll run an in-person session with you paired with a detailed report provided within two weeks of the assessment. This report can be used as medical evidence for an NDIS application.
Throughcare
We will do our best to support you to find the help that has been recommended. Sometimes we can provide this for you but other times we may need to refer you to another service. Either way, we will support you through your journey in any way we can.
Meet CHAMPS
We know that cookie-cutter, traditional assessment methods don’t offer the best outcomes for kids. That’s why we developed ChAMPS (Child & Adolescent Multidisciplinary Private Service), our multidisciplinary team for the assessment of complex childhood development needs.
In our experience, developmental differences show up across several areas and a comprehensive assessment is the best way to understand if a child is neurodivergent and/or has complex needs to support their development. We ensure multiple clinicians from different disciplines are in the one location on the same day to observe and assess your child, with our multidisciplinary team working together to create a holistic plan for ongoing support to ensure your child reaches their potential.
Plus, we explore your child’s ability to complete daily tasks (from communicating to self-care and learning) and we offer tailored interventions and supports to help them achieve independence. These recommendations are aligned with how the NDIS assesses the support needs and funding allocations of individuals with disabilities or neurodevelopmental conditions, such as Autism.
Book Now
Complete this brief Online Intake Questionnaire (2 mins) to speed up the process for booking your initial appointment at Marsden Health. We will contact you as soon as it’s complete.