Screening

Screening questionnaires are short tools that look for signs that a fuller assessment might be worthwhile. Services often use one before deciding whether to accept a referral referral When a professional passes your child on to a specialist team for assessment or treatment. A GP, school or health visitor can usually make one. Read the full definition of referral , and you may be asked to fill one in about your child.

A screening result, high or low, is not a diagnosis. It cannot confirm a condition and it cannot rule one out. If a screening score is used to close a referral and what you see day to day says otherwise, you can ask the service what evidence it would need to look again.

Our own profiler is similar in this one respect: it organises what you have noticed, and it is not a diagnostic assessment Diagnostic assessment The appointments where specialists work out whether your child meets the criteria for a diagnosis, such as autism or ADHD. It is the step that can end with a diagnosis. Read the full definition of Diagnostic assessment either.