Referrals to the Social Communication & Autism Spectrum Service

Referral criteria

• As a Tier 4 specialist service we accept referrals from local paediatricians or CAMHS services only.
• We are not able to accept GP referrals, self-referrals, or private referrals.
• Referrals from Consultants internal to GOSH will need local community paediatrician or CAMHS support, in writing (secure email is acceptable).
• We accept referrals for children and young people aged between 4 and 17 years.
• Referral to our service must not be associated with closure of the case by the local team. Further information will be sought when there is a high level of identified risk due to family issues, behaviour or mental health, and where clarity is needed regarding social care or mental health service involvement and who will be managing risk locally. If risk is not being supported locally, we cannot accept the referral.
• Referral form - in order to speed up our triage process, it is helpful if referrers can complete this form and send it to us with all relevant documents attached.

Additional referral criteria are as follows:

• The child or young person has not been diagnosed with an Intellectual Disability. If they have, please refer to the GOS Neurodevelopmental Assessment Clinic. NB. we work closely with this clinic and may transfer the referral across to them if on receiving a referral, we feel they are better able to help.
• There is a clear request for a second opinion for ASD assessment. We cannot accept referrals for intervention or advice on management.
• Several social communication concerns have been described to support the reason for this request.
• There has been a reasonably detailed local ASD assessment (n.b. screening questionnaires-only would not be considered sufficiently detailed), either using ASD-specific standardised assessment tools, or structured around ASD diagnostic criteria, and incorporating information from child, parents and school.
• Occasionally we may accept referrals where there is no previous local ASD assessment, on the basis of complexity. In this case, sufficient evidence of complexity must be provided such that the local team would be unlikely to have specialist expertise to undertake such an assessment.
• Examples of complexity might be: complex neurodisability, medical, mental health, family or attachment difficulties that make reaching diagnostic certainty regarding ASD very challenging; a need for detailed psychiatric, cognitive, neuropsychological or speech and language assessment as integral to the diagnostic process, by clinicians with a high level of expertise in assessing children with ASD and co-occurring conditions.
• On some occasions, it may be that a different team would better meet the family’s needs. This may be because the child has suspected attachment issues, co-occurring medical conditions or intellectual disability, for example. In this case we will facilitate a referral to a different team in GOSH.
• Sometimes further information suggests the child’s difficulties are not related to possible ASD but rather arise from family, school or mental health issues. In this case we will signpost back to local teams rather than complete a full ASD assessment.

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