We offer a range of specialist diagnostic and assessment services for children, young people and adults. We make use of the recommended international assessment measures such as the DISCO, the ADI-R, DIVA, and the ADOS-2, alongside various screening measures and tools. Information elicited during these assessments is combined with the information we are able to collect from various other sources and from across diverse contexts in order to compile as accurate a picture as possible of development and functioning across the person’s lifespan.
In our clinical work, the primary purpose is to facilitate an understanding of the pattern, over time, of the specific skills and impairments that underlie overt behaviour. This type of dimensional approach to clinical description helps sharply identify those areas in which intervention is most needed and provides insight into what might be the most useful intervention. It also identifies strengths and competencies, pointing to areas in which the individual’s engagement should be encouraged, and a career perhaps sought out.
Two of our most frequently used neurodevelopmental screenings include:
The Diagnostic Interview for Social and Communication Disorders (DISCO): The DISCO was developed for use at The Centre for Social and Communication Disorders in the United Kingdom, by Dr Lorna Wing and Dr Judith Gould, as both a clinical and a research instrument. There is no single specific physical or psychological test for any of the autism(s) or as is referred to in the relevant diagnostic manuals, the Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs). In order to recognize and identify the impairments of social interaction, social communication and social imagination, together with the associated routines, ‘rigidities’ and repetitive behaviours, and all the other features that can be found in autism, information must be collected in a systematic way. This is achieved by using the DISCO, a detailed, semi-structured interview. Many neurodevelopmental conditions, for example, the autisms, can only be identified through an investigation of behaviour, both in the past and the present. The DISCO is a comprehensive aid to ensuring as much relevant and helpful information is collected in a thorough manner, from the person(s) who know(s) the individual best; this might include the child or adult themselves.
The DISCO framework is used to collect information concerning all aspects of the individual’s skills, deficits and untypical behaviour, not just the features of possible ASDs. In this regard, it also makes it possible for the clinician to develop a picture around additional or overlapping neurodevelopmental problems that may be present such as attention differences, Tourette’s Syndrome, learning differences and abilities, and co-ordination struggles. The DISCO is designed to elicit not just a diagnosis but also a comprehensive picture of the whole individual, through the story of their development and behaviour, both past and present, and thereby to collate information that assists in identifying and describing some of the qualitative social challenges, developmental delays and other developmental information that helps to provide a broad and detailed idiosyncratic profile or spectrum of the individual’s skills and areas of challenge or need. Information from infancy and childhood – both relating to unusual or untypical features, as well as information regarding current skills and unusual behaviours, is collected and considered.
The ADOS-2 (Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule- Second Edition): An activity and play-based assessment administered by trained clinicians to observe social and communication skills.
