peaches

Thank you, looks useful.

If you phone the NAS helpline and speak to an advisor, they will give you the names, addresses and telephone numbers of diagnosticians in your area from the directory. They can look at private and NHS separately if you want. This is how I found our route to diagnosis.

Thank you all. Could you PM me if you have used the Sheffield Asperger's Syndrome Service based at St Georges Hospital Winter Street? Also if anyone has come across the names Luke Beardon and Linda Buchan please PM me. (Hope this doesnt break your rules). I havent any problems with our local Asperger's service ATM apart from the fact that its tertiary referrals only. What bothers me is my daughter seeing the team psychiatrist for our area. My experience of these is that they arent great and try to fob you off with antidepressants, and then more antidepressants.

Err... What has Norfolk Broads got to do with anything?? It says it underneath my name. Im from Sheffield though! I cant find how to change it.

I have just joined your wonderful forum and thought I would stop and say hello. It is likely that my daughter has Asperger's and our GP has referred us to a psychiatrist. We also have a possible private assessment in the pipeline. (Please see my post on the help and advice forum). My daughter is 21 and has been a challenge from being a small girl. We knew she was different, I had read about autism, but never considered it because my reading covered extreme cases and they didnt have any real similarity to my daughter. I only recently read more about Asperger's and it immediately occurred to me that this was describing our daughter. If you think you can help me with my query, please switch to the help and advice forum and please post. Otherwise, hello everyone!!

Hello! Im new here and I would really like some advice! This week we saw our GP as we believe our daughter has Asperger's. Our GP agreed it was likely and referred us to a psychiatrist on the area team. Our daughter is 21 but we have always known she was different, we didnt make the connection until recently. I have learnt that the route for diagnosis in my city is a tertiary service. That is, you go to your GP, your GP refers you to the Psychiatrist who covers your area of the city, then this Psychiatrist refers you to the Asperger's Service which is based in our city but is a national centre. I thought this was long winded, but I let my GP make the referral. In the meantime, a senior lecturer in AS at the university offered to do the preliminary work for diagnosing my daughter and pass her on to a consultant privately at a much reduced rate. The time scale of this is less, Ive heard from another AS mother that the Lecturer is a very personable chap and he diagnosed her son. He comes to your home and its much less daunting. Great I thought. Until today. I had tried to speak to the admin person at the AS service earlier in the week and left a message. She got back to me. I told her about the above. She said the lecturer concerned was not a clinician and couldnt make a diagnosis. I pointed out that he was passing us on to a clinician who was an NHS consultant who worked for her service and she said she didnt think that arrangement existed. She also said we would have to have a diagnosis on the NHS if we wanted to access support and services for our daughter. Is this true?