Wednesday, 11 July 2018

My youngest is still being assessed for Autism....

I haven't really said much about Ellie and how we are getting on with getting her assessed to see whether she has Autism or not because nothing much had happened until the past couple of weeks....


This is how it stood the last time I spoke about it....The first woman we had met who said that Ellie didn't show signs of autism without even meeting her had brought a 2nd woman to meet Ellie at our house had said she wasn't too sure about autism but said more assessments were needed.

 The two women went into school and observed Ellie....I spoke to the teacher afterwards and she said that the women had insinuated that there was no sign of Autism....A report was going to be sent out to us....

What I didn't know until we had the end of term review for Ellie a couple of weeks ago, another woman came into school shortly after the two woman had visited. She observed Ellie and said she can see many autistic traits in her....The teacher told the woman about what the other two woman had said and there was a lot of tutting and shaking her head. She seemed pretty shocked....I said to Ellie's teacher that as soon as Ellie had seen the two women watching her she would have recognised them and may have acted differently in front of them. She agreed.

We received a letter last week to go for the next part of the assessment. An Occupational Therapy Functional Assessment. It was described as a fun, play based assessment with activities and challenges to do and that is where we went last Thursday....

We had a fair idea where we were going but to be sure we got the earlier bus and ended up half an hour early....lol Then of course the new woman seeing us was late (through no fault of her own).....So it was a long wait.

The woman was lovely and really put us at ease...She took Ellie off to into a little room and said they'd be about an hour....They were. Next time I will take a book or magazine. hehehe 

When they came out the woman said she would write her report and send it to the person dealing with Ellie and we will get a report soon.....We do have to go back to meet a doctor for Ellie to have a medical but that will be in a few weeks....

Ellie said they did jigsaws, drew and just chatted about pets, what they enjoy doing and football....With things like this I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall just to see what was going on...

So that's where we stand at the moment.....We're waiting for another appointment and some reports.....I really hope they don't stop work for the summer holidays. It was this time last year when we got in touch with the school nurse and they said they would be in touch in September because they are off when the schools are.....I am being optimistic and hoping we have some sort of answer by September for when Ellie starts secondary school....

4 comments :

  1. Its a long process isn't it. We saw the school nurse in October and she was conviced Olivia is on the spectrum but we've yet to have an appointment to see anyone. I hope you get some answers soon x

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you that you don't have to wait too long xx

    ReplyDelete
  3. Waiting is the worst isn't it?! I bet waiting outside whilst Ellie had her Occupational Therapy Functional Assessment was tough. I would have wanted to know what was going on too. I hope you get some answers soon. x

    ReplyDelete
  4. What a long wait you’ve had, but it sounds like they are finally making progress. How annoying that those first women decided that she didn’t have autism. I really hope you get your answer before she starts at her new school. X

    ReplyDelete