What does the Autism Diagnostic Service for Suffolk do?
We have 2 teams:
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the youth team see young people aged 11 – 17 years who have a GP in Suffolk click here for the youth team
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the adult team see people 18 years and older who have a GP in Suffolk
We try to and find out if a person has autism. This is called an assessment. We work with the person, and their family, if that is ok.
We are a multi-disciplinary team; this means different members of staff with different skills.
We follow NICE guidelines. NICE is the short name for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. They find out what works well in health and social care and give advice about it. The advice tells us what care and support people using services should have. It also says how those services should work.
NICE have written some guidance: Overview | Autism spectrum disorder in adults: diagnosis and management | Guidance | NICE
Our team tries to follow all the advice from NICE but there are some things that we can’t do at the moment. We are working hard to on things like making our waiting list shorter, so people don’t have to wait as long for an assessment.