Ms Davida Hartman:

Traditionally, there was an issue. Until very recently, even the Wikipedia page for autism was only about children and adults were not mentioned. Adult autism assessment is very new and what was happening was people were taking tests or methods used for children and just extrapolating them and using them on adults. This continues today and is inappropriate. Adults were being asked to literally look at a picture book and being observed, extremely inappropriately. There was also use of deficit-based tests and outdated ways of assessment. At the moment there is no standardised test that is in any way good, whether neuroaffirmative or not neuroaffirmative, for assessing adults.

At the core, we have diagnostic criteria for autism. The criteria have their problems because they are all completely deficit-based, but if one looks at the areas and not the deficit-based aspect the criteria are okay. They recognise areas of autistic experience and they are what we have to go on; we have to use the DSM-5 or ICD-11 criteria. However, the core way to assess is to essentially just listen to the autistic person and to gather their experiences. The people coming to us for assessment are a particular group in that they have been able to find us and think they are autistic already. The vast majority of people coming to us have read a lot of information online and are coming to us saying they really think they are autistic and telling us why. We are getting sent 20, 30 or 40 pages of information about why they think they might be autistic and we support them in talking it through. We have taken away the power imbalance. It is not us telling somebody they are autistic or not. It is not a tick-box exercise. It is us exploring with them why they think they are autistic and suggesting we look at this area or that area. We might ask them to tell us about their family and all those kinds of things. It is a collaborative exploration of what it means to be autistic, essentially. What we ask is does their experience align with autistic experience and it is about supporting them to figure that out. We use many different communication methods. We do not expect people to speak verbally. They can send information in writing and we respect their communication preferences.

That is it in a nutshell and it is not rocket science. It is about respecting people to be the expert in their own experience and possibly, though sometimes not, we might know a little more about the diagnostic criteria so we are supporting them in figuring out whether they meet them or not.