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Improvement suggestion

Posted By MelissaI

"Improvement suggestion"

About: Women, Children and Family Services / Paediatric Autistic Spectrum Disorder Service

(as a parent/guardian),

Whilst attending a child asd assignment my child was in a room alone with two members of staff.  I understand the possible reasoning for this part of the assessment process to exclude parents in the room.

I also understand that of course staff are checked etc. however I do feel that it should necessary for rooms to have a viewing window even one sided to allow parents to see their child at all times. I don’t feel it is acceptable to expect parents to not be able to view their child for safety. 

Thank you for reading, this is just my opinion and suggestion.

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Responses

Response from Lisa Curlett, Service Lead for Paediatric ASD, Women's Children and Family Services, Northern Trust last month
We are preparing to make a change
Lisa Curlett
Service Lead for Paediatric ASD, Women's Children and Family Services,
Northern Trust

Submitted on 11/02/2026 at 13:06
Published on Care Opinion at 13:38

My name is Lisa Curlett and I am the service lead for the Paediatric Autism Service. I would like to thank you for taking the time to share your concerns regarding your child’s recent autism assessment. I appreciate you raising this with us. I would like to reassure you that your child’s assessment was concluded in line with the standard protocols for the ADOS assessment tool used in clinic based autism assessments, which recommends for particular modules a child is seen with trained diagnosticians without parent involvement, to allow for most accurate observations to be made. I recognise that this may have felt uncomfortable and unexpected for you & I am sorry this was not explained clearly beforehand. Your feedback is valuable & it will help us as a service improve in how we communicate with families and for future accommodation requests for the service that would allow for a viewing room.

I would be happy to speak with you further if you wished to contact me via email stating FOI Lisa at PaediatricAutismService@northerntrust.hscni.net

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