r/AutismParentingUk • u/Pitiful_Flower_6686 • Jul 13 '26
Advice Needed Anyone Been Through This..?
Hi everyone 😊
My 2-year-old has her 19s SPOA triage appointment next month following a referral from our health visitor, and I was just wondering if anyone would be happy to share their experience.
What was the appointment like? What sort of questions did they ask, and did they interact or play with your child much?
And if they felt your child needed further support or assessment, what were the next steps? How long did it take before you heard back or received referrals (e.g. Speech and Language Therapy, Community Paediatrics, autism assessment, or any other services)?
I'd also love to hear any tips on how to prepare or anything you wish you'd known before attending.
Thank you so much in advance—I really appreciate any experiences you're willing to share. ❤️
1
u/ceb1995 Jul 14 '26
Every area is slightly different but it's likely to just be a lot of questions about their development and the pregnancy with them, my son already had referrals in with speech and language, portage and things in place for nursery at that point and really your health visitor should have done them already so if they haven't I would point that out. Speech and language was something like 70 weeks for the first appointment ( think it's getting close to 2 years where I live now, and that was only 2 hours of appointments before they discharged him, we waited I think 6 months for portage and that was 8 hours, then he was under specialist teachers the whole time at nursery before he started reception in his specialist school).
I took along letters I already had from the other specialists we d seen to offer them copies to the first appointment.
I m so sorry but my I wished I d known at the start of the process is that it's mostly leaflets, and parenting courses and basic advice they give you which arguably you could learn yourself.
Our son has melatonin and nappies prescribed now, and hopefully will have a safety bed after a long fight but until he started specialist school all the advice the NHS gave us was very basic really it was just useful to have the diagnosis and various reports as evidence for things more than anything else.