Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the average waiting time for an (a) autism and (b) ADHD diagnosis was for (i) everyone, (ii) children, (iii) young people and (iv) adults in the most recent year for which data is available.

The data requested is not held centrally.

However, data from the Mental Health Service Data Set (MHSDS) for 1 August 2021 to 31 July 2022 in England indicates that 158,901 patients had an open referral (assessment not yet complete) for suspected autism. Of these, 27,050 have received a first attended contact within the year. The median wait time for these 27,050 patients was 207 days.

98,056 patients aged under 18 at the time of referral had an open referral for suspected autism. Of these 18,747 have received a first attended contact within the year. The median wait time for these 18,747 patients was 231 days.

60,860 patients aged 18 or over at time of referral had an open referral for suspected autism. Of these 8,309 have received a first attended contact within the year. The median wait time for these 8,309 patients was 127 days.

We recognise that a lot of autism assessments for children are reported through the Community Services Data Set (CSDS), however it is not currently possible to correctly identify referrals for suspected autism in the CSDS and so we are unable to provide average wait times for this activity. Therefore, the current reported autism data comes from the MHSDS only. A number of providers of MHSDS data were affected by a cyber incident which has had a substantial impact on the data. Therefore, data presented in this answer are imputed estimates based on data from providers not impacted by the cyber incident. The trends and activity reported by these providers is, for the most part, reflective of the providers who were impacted by the cyber incident. However, extreme caution should be used when interpreting these figures.

Data for waiting times for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) assessments is not held centrally. The Department is looking into options for improving data collection and reporting on waiting times for ADHD assessments and diagnoses.