Neurodivergence – Information and Support

No. There are a range of specialist professionals who can refer to the autism pathway including Paediatrician, Speech and Language Therapist, Wolverhampton Outreach teacher, Special Needs Early Years worker or teacher, Occupational Therapist, CAMHS worker as well as Educational Psychologist (EP). If your child is already involved with one of these professionals, talk to them about your concerns. If they agree that a referral is a good idea for your child, they will need a second professional to support the referral too, but this can be the SENCo at your child’s school if no specialist professional is involved.

If your child is not involved with any of these specialist professionals, you would need to seek a referral to one of them via your Health Visitor (for children under 5), GP or your child’s school or nursery.

No. The ADHD pathway in Wolverhampton is overseen by the Community Paediatrics team so you would need to seek a referral to their service and you can discuss this with your GP or ask the school to involve the school nurse. It is useful for your GP or school nurse to have some information about how your child presents at school, in addition to the information you can provide about how they are at home, so that they can decide what course of action is best. The school’s SENCo can often help with this by writing a letter or short report that you can take with you when you visit the GP. If you have any reports from specialist services already involved with your child (e.g. EP, Outreach Service, Speech and Language Therapy, Special Needs Early Years Service), it is useful for the GP or school nurse to see these too and include copies if a referral to Paediatrics is made.

Schools commission their Educational Psychology Service (which may be part of the Local Authority or a private company) to help them to meet the needs of the children in their school. An individual child’s educational needs are established through cycles of assessment, planning, implementation of support and review, not through any particular diagnosis (and this is the guidance within the Special Educational Needs Code of Practice). The amount of time that schools purchase is limited and they have to use it in a way that best meets the needs of their school community. This might mean using it to help them support the children with the highest level of need at school or focusing on helping them to work out what works best for a young person, rather than a lengthy assessment leading to a referral for a medical diagnosis. This does not mean that the school does not recognise your child’s needs or how difficult life at home might be for your child and you and they still have a responsibility to make adjustments, give support or use additional strategies where necessary.

If involving an EP is not an option, you can talk to school about whether involving another service which is not commissioned in the same way would be appropriate (e.g. Outreach Service, Speech and Language Therapy Service, Special Needs Early Years Service) or you can visit your GP to discuss referral to Community Paediatrics.

In primary schools, the first port of call if you have concerns about your child’s support is to speak to their class teacher. All teachers have a responsibility to identify and support special educational needs and your child’s progress is the responsibility of their class teacher. If your child is in secondary school or college, their form tutor is often the first port of call, followed by head of year. If you wish, you can ask for the school or college’s Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator (SENCo) to be involved in your conversations. If you feel you need some support or advice in your conversations with school staff, Wolverhampton Information, Advice and Support Service (Wolves IASS) is an independent organisation that can provide this to young people, parents and carers (see wolvesiass.org for contact information).