Autism: Diagnosis
(asked on 15th January 2020) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the average waiting time for an autism assessment in the most recent period for which figures are available; and what steps his Department is taking to reduce waiting times for an autism assessment.
We are determined to drive up performance on autism assessments and diagnosis.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommends that people with possible autism who are referred to an autism team for a diagnostic assessment should have the diagnostic assessment started within three months of their referral. We expect clinical commissioning groups to take account of clinical guidelines published by NICE when commissioning services for their local populations.
On 14 November 2019, NHS Digital published statistics that present the number of new referrals to mental health services for which the referral reason was suspected autism, as well as their waiting times to first appointment. These are experimental statistics and have been published by NHS Digital to involve users and stakeholders in the future development of the data, including work to improve the quality of the data. The data is available at the following link:
The NHS Long Term Plan has set out that over the next three years, autism diagnosis will be included alongside work with children and young people’s mental health services to test and implement the most effective ways to reduce waiting times for specialist services.