A lack of coherent and consistent guidelines on supporting children with autism and their families to gain access to diagnosis and to the support they need following diagnosis, serves as a barrier to accessing appropriate services. The availability of suitable interventions or supports remains low and unevenly spread.
Despite central Government policy for children with autism (eg the Children’s National Service Framework (NSF) autism exemplar), parents continue to tell us that support varies across the country.
What we’re doing
Lobbying on the need for early intervention and improved diagnostic processes has resulted in the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) developing a guideline on diagnosing autism in children and adolescents.
We are working with NICE on the guidelines for diagnosis and on their proposed guidelines for 'managing autism in children'.