ADHD Diagnostic Assessments
Chiswick, West London
Our Child and Adolescent Psychology team can provide Assessment and Diagnosis for children and young people between the ages of 8-17 years who may be displaying signs and symptoms of ADHD; Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
We strictly follow the ‘NICE’ Guidelines (The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence).
If you are looking around for an ADHD assessment, please ensure the clinic you select follows these to ensure the validity of your report.
The Assessment: Our Step-by-Step Process
We provide a gold standard assessment, following all NICE guidelines, with highly robust assessment procedures.
1. We will initially run through some simple ‘screening questions’ with you, to check this is a suitable pathway for your child.
2. After booking in your clinic assessment date, we will send you some paperwork to complete regarding your child, including developmental and family history, as well as ADHD Psychological Rating Scales. Your child can also complete one, if they feel comfortable to do so. We will also liaise with your child’s school, as further screeners will need to be completed by them.
3. On the day of the in-person assessment, our Psychologist will be waiting for you at The Children’s Wellness Centre and will carry out a comprehensive observation and face-to-face assessment of your child, lasting around 2 hours, including further interviews with parents/carers.
4. We additionally carry out a school observation for every child having an ADHD assessment with us, which is best practice in accordance to guidelines. Further in-person conversations will be held with school staff so a full picture of your child can be understood. This school observation is completed by either our Clinical Director and Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist, Tammy, or our Assistant Psychologist and Psychotherapist Lucia, ensuring multidisciplinary team involvement.
5. Our Psychologist will then collate all the information from the paperwork, the parent/carer interviews, the school observation, the clinical screener scores and the in-person assessment to make the final clinical decision. If we need any further evidence we will ask your child to complete a QbCheck computer test which will provide another piece of data. This is a test commonly used in the NHS to support with a diagnosis. We appreciate families may be anxious awaiting the outcome, so the Psychologist will arrange a telephone or video consultation call with you to share the results of the assessment, prior to you receiving the formal report. This is usually within 7-10 of the assessment date, providing all paperwork has been sent back in time.
6. A formal report will then be sent to families within 21 working days of the assessment date. Although you will already be aware of the outcome, this report will detail the final results, and if appropriate the formal diagnosis of ADHD, as well as any necessary recommendations. This report can be shared externally with your child’s school and their GP to update their medical records.
7. We offer psychoeducation sessions, ADHD coaching, onward therapeutic referrals and a medication pathway post-assessment if you are seeking any follow-up support.
Our ADHD assessments take place in calm, welcoming therapy rooms designed to help children and young people feel at ease. Depending on your child’s age and needs, we may bring in resources or toys to support the process. The rooms are not pre-filled with these items, as we want to create a comfortable environment without unnecessary distractions.
NICE compliant ADHD Assessments are provided by our HCPC Registered Clinical Psychologists, Linda Campbell-Arthur: Registration PYL37777, Dr Holly Barker: Registration PYL041730, Dr Elena Barsacchi: Registration PYL36186 and Dr Parul Sabey: Registration PYL32791
Will the Report be Accepted in the NHS?
At our clinic, we understand how important it is for families to feel confident that their child’s private ADHD assessment will be recognised by the NHS. That’s why we strictly follow NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) guidelines throughout our assessment process, ensuring that our evaluations meet national clinical standards. While no private clinic can ever guarantee NHS acceptance, since final decisions always rest with individual NHS services and local policies, we want to reassure you that, to date, we have never encountered a single case where one of our assessments has been rejected. In fact, many of our clients themselves are doctors and school SENCOs who have read our reports for their patients/pupils and have then booked in with us for their own child.
Our Psychology Team
Our Neurodevelopmental Assessments are led by our Psychology team, all of whom have extensive experience in mental health and assessing for ADHD, including experience working for NHS CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service). Their NHS work means they are very aware of NHS expectations when accepting an external private diagnostic report and all guidelines which must be followed.
Fees
The cost of the full assessment process, including the in-clinic assessment, the school visit, the verbal feedback consultation call and the formal written report is £1,550.
This fee covers all school observations within a 4-mile radius of The Chiswick Children’s Wellness Centre. For school observations beyond this, or outside of London, there will be an additional travel fee. We are happy to travel, and have visited schools far and wide before.
If your child does not attend a school, we will use an additional measure of a QbCheck (an ADHD computer test) in place of this, at no extra cost.
Please note, some clinics do not provide school observations and instead only rely on questionnaires and views of the staff, rather than witnessing the child in their school environment. This is an integral part of the ADHD process to observe a child in a different setting to the clinic, especially in cases when a child may ‘mask’ behaviours, and this is reflective in our fees.
A deposit is payable in advance to secure your assessment date, and the remaining balance can be paid in installments.
Medication
If you would like to access a private prescription for medication post-assessment, we offer a seamless referral pathway with our partner psychiatrists. We have a designated team member who can organise this for you, post diagnosis, and you can usually be seen within a week of receiving your diagnosis. Please note this will occur private psychiatry fees, which differ depending on your child’s need and which psychiatrist you choose to see.
Many families who do not want to pay, instead use their report to join the NHS CAMHS medication initiation waiting list instead.