Children and young people
ADHD assessment for children and young people.
Most parents who get in touch are not looking for a label. They are looking at the gap between what their child could do and what they are managing to do, and they want to understand why it is there.
When families get in touch
Four common starting points.
Families contact me at every stage and for every reason. These four come up more than any others, though yours does not have to be on the list.
You can see they are struggling
There is no particular reason and nothing anybody can point to, but your intuition tells you something is different. You have noticed that your child works harder than they ought to have to, or that things are difficult when they get back in from school, and you would like to understand why.
That is reason enough. You do not need a crisis, a referral or a letter from school before you are allowed to ask the question.
Starting school
For a lot of families this is the first time anybody has seen their child alongside thirty others of the same age, in the same room, asked to do the same thing at the same time.
Differences that were simply part of who they are at home become visible, and sometimes become a struggle. Often it is school who raises it first. Sometimes it is a parent who has quietly wondered for a while and now has something to point at.
Moving up to high school
One teacher and one classroom become ten of each, plus a timetable, a locker, homework arriving from several directions and a bag that has to hold the right things on the right day.
The organisational demand multiplies more or less overnight, and a child who was managing can stop managing quite suddenly. What looks like a change in attitude is often a change in load.
Sixth form, university, leaving home
Here the structure does not increase. It disappears. Nobody is checking the bag, chasing the deadline, or noticing the lesson that was missed.
For a young person who has been carried further than anybody realised by the scaffolding around them, this is frequently the point at which it becomes clear how much that scaffolding was doing.
What parents actually want
An explanation, not a label.
Almost every parent I meet is doing their best and simply wants to understand their child. They are not trying to label them, and they are not hoping to have them treated differently. What they want is to close the gap between what their child is capable of and what they are actually achieving.
The gap is what I am interested in. If ADHD is part of what is keeping it open, that is worth knowing and worth doing something about. If it turns out to be something else, that matters just as much. The only way to tell is to look properly.
I am a parent of two, and I understand the distinction between wanting a label for your child and wanting somebody to finally explain what you have been watching for years. This work is about their whole experience and what is actually going on for them, not about finding difficulties or handing out labels.
Schools matter here too, and schools are stretched. I have yet to meet one that did not want to help. I have met plenty who did not have the time or the information to know how, which is a different problem and a solvable one.
Parents are the experts in their own children.
Dr Alex Hull
From your child's side
It should not feel like a test.
Your child comes to a comfortable room and we have a chat. There are fidget toys and things to occupy their hands, and they are welcome to use them throughout. Nothing about it is designed to be unpleasant, and nothing is designed to catch them out.
Children are usually far better informed than adults expect, and they tend to have their own views about what is going on for them. I take those seriously. Everything is pitched in a way that makes sense at their age and their stage.
Just as importantly, the assessment does not depend on your child performing well in a room with somebody they have only just met. That would be an unfair test of a nervous child and poor practice besides. By the time we meet I already have your account, the questionnaires, information from school, and the objective data from the QbCheck. A quiet day does not derail it.
Some children want to be there for the feedback and hear it for themselves. Others would rather their parents heard it first and told them in their own way, in their own time. Both are entirely fine, and you know which is right for your child.
The school's part
Getting what school knows, without adding to their load.
ADHD is a developmental condition, which means it has to be understood across settings rather than in one room on one afternoon. School sees your child for six hours a day among thirty peers. That is information nobody else has.
Asking a stretched school office for a considered account of one particular child is a bigger ask than it sounds, so we do that work rather than sending over a form and hoping. We make contact, have a proper conversation, gather any reports or records that matter, and ask staff for their own view of what they are seeing. It happens with your agreement, and your assessment stays led by me throughout.
For young people at college or university the same principle applies, adjusted to what is useful at that age.
What it makes possible
A diagnosis is a language other people already speak.
Understanding comes first, and for most families that is the part which matters most. But a diagnosis also does practical work, because it is a language schools, colleges, exam boards and local authorities already understand.
In practice
What a report can support.
Access arrangements for exams
Extra time and other arrangements, where the evidence supports them and the school or exam board asks for it.
Evidence towards an EHCP
A full written report contributes to the picture a local authority needs in order to assess what your child requires.
A conversation with the SENCo
Something concrete to act on, rather than a general sense that a child is finding things harder than they should be.
How the adults read your child
The distance between he is not trying and he is trying extremely hard at something that costs him more than it costs the others is not a small one, and it usually begins with a document.
What any particular report unlocks depends on your child, their needs and their school. I will be straight with you about what yours is likely to support.
Afterwards
Validation, then a direction.
The most common reaction is relief. Parents have usually been watching something for years, and having it named, explained and taken seriously is a kind of validation for what they already knew.
You know your child better than anybody does. What an assessment adds is a framework and a language to go with what you already understand, and a clear direction for what to do next.
Plenty of families want to explore medication, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to want, and I can point you towards that conversation. I would rather it did not crowd out everything else, though. The practical and psychological changes families make around a diagnosis often do a great deal of the work, and watching that happen is one of the genuine rewards of this job.
Two ways to be assessed
You choose how we meet.
The assessment itself is identical either way. The only difference is whether we sit in the same room.
In person
YorkWe meet face to face
The clinical interview takes place at my consulting room in York. Families travel to it from right across Yorkshire.
Nothing further to pay at any stage.
Online
£100 lessWe meet by video
The same assessment and the same clinician, from wherever you are in Yorkshire or beyond. Often easier with school runs and siblings to work around.
Nothing further to pay at any stage.
Everything else is identical: the questionnaires, the contact with school, the QbCheck, the full written report, the feedback meeting and the letter to your GP.
Payment options are available.
In their words
What parents say afterwards.
We have seen a massive difference. The more we put into making the changes, the more we got out of it.
Parent, child assessment
We finally helped school understand what was going on. The objective data especially helped with that.
Parent, child assessment
As a parent, navigating the world of ADHD can be scary. Alex made the assessment process seamless and informative. The feedback we received was clear and actionable, allowing us to take meaningful steps forward.
Parent, child assessment
From families assessed by Dr Alex Hull.
About me · Dr Alex Hull
Your child's assessment is led by me.
I am a Clinical Psychologist registered with the HCPC, and I have been assessing ADHD since 2014. I trained and started out in the NHS and have completed many hundreds of assessments since, with children from the age of six and with adults.
A Clinical Psychologist is trained across the whole range of psychological difficulty in childhood, not ADHD alone. That matters here, because a great many things can look like ADHD in a child, and telling them apart is the entire job. We understand typical development and use it as the starting point, precisely so that we do not pathologise something that is simply part of growing up.
Where a picture is complex I bring in colleagues from other professions, and it stays led by me throughout.
Qualifications and registration
No waiting list
Start with a conversation.
A free fifteen minute call with me. There is no pressure and no obligation, and you do not need to have it all worked out before we speak.
Free, fifteen minutes, no obligation
Telephone
07768 787175Where
York, and across Yorkshire.Online throughout the UK.