• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Accessibility
  • Terms and settings
  • Site map
NHS County Durham CCG

NHS County Durham CCG

County Durham Clinical Commissioning Group

  • Home
  • About us
  • Our work
  • Get involved
  • Events
  • Documents
  • News
  • Contact Us
You are here: Home / Our work / County Durham Needs Led Neurodevelopmental Pathway

County Durham Needs Led Neurodevelopmental Pathway

This page provides information for young people, families and professionals about our needs led approach, the assessment diagnostic process and the support available before, during and after assessment.

It should be noted that services listed on this page do not need a diagnosis of Autism or ADHD to access support.

New ‘needs led’ pathway

Health services, local authority, parent carer forums and Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) organisations have worked together to design a new ‘needs led’ pathway to help support parents/carers and children and young people where the child or young person has a need associated with a neurodevelopmental condition, such as autism/social communication needs or attentional difficulties such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD/ADD).

The needs led pathway is for children and young people in County Durham aged up to 18. The pathway for children under 5 will be slightly different than the pathway for those aged over 5.

For children aged under 5, work is still ongoing to change this assessment process, but at this time, please continue to speak to your health visitor, GP, or other health professional.

Working more closely together

Through consultation with parents and professionals it is clear that advice and support are most effective when everyone involved works closely together.

Changes also needed to be made to the ‘diagnostic’ element of the service to ensure children and young people did not have to undergo unnecessary assessments over an elongated period of time. We still have work to do to get the waiting times down, but new processes will help with this and more importantly, your child or young person and their family should feel supported during this assessment process.

What’s changed

As part of ongoing discussions with families and young people services are working more closely together to offer advice, or help, or support when it is needed. The support offer continues to develop, and organisations and services are working hard to communicate clearly with families where they can get this from when it is needed. This advice, help and support described below available to children, young people and families is not dependent on having a diagnosis, it is based on need.

Please take some time to read through the information available in this section.  We hope that you will be able to find the right support to meet your child or young person’s needs.

Support Offer in County Durham

There are links further down the page to allow you to access more information about the services, as well as guidance on advice and support available in your local area. These services will help you explore your child or young person’s needs and can offer you support and techniques to help meet these needs.  Parent Carer Forums can provide you with useful information and signpost you to helpful services in County Durham. Alternatively, if you don’t feel ready to speak to other parents yet, then there is a wealth of information available through the virtual offer.

Self-Help / Virtual Offer

More information is available with the NHS to help you understand the traits associated with neurodevelopmental needs, for example Autism and/or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

Behaviour

Develop your new routine as soon as you are able. Have fixed points within the day that you can focus on, even if there is ‘free time’ at other parts of the day. Use diaries, timetables, lists and other familiar supports to aid this

Consider using social stories or social narratives to explain the changes we are making and why they are happening.

Diagnostic Neurodevelopmental Assessment

Introduction to the new Neurodevelopmental Pathway for Families

In County Durham and Darlington, we are launching a new Neurodevelopmental Pathway which will replace the old separate pathways for Autism and Attentional Difficulties (ADHD).  This document will explain why the pathways are changing and how the new pathway will operate.

Read More

If you think that your child or young person is likely to have either Autism or ADHD or both, and you would like them to be considered for a neurodevelopmental assessment, please follow the link below. Young people and their families who’ve already been referred into TEWV for possible autism and/or ADHD assessment, and are waiting for the next stage, may be asked by professionals to complete this form to help them to understand more about the needs of the young people and families, Please be assured that this will not create a new referral into the service and it won’t extend the time you’re waiting.

Neurodevelopmental Assessment Referral Form

Information for professionals

The following information was designed to support professionals looking to find out more about the Needs Led Neurodevelopmental Pathway.  It describes what the Needs Led Neurodevelopmental Pathway can offer, how children and young people are referred for a diagnostic neurodevelopmental assessment and how decisions are made.

Read More

You can find out more about the specialist assessment pathway

Useful Websites and Documents

Support Website and Contact Directory

Referral Form

Local Support Offer Website – Durham County Council

County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust Children’s Occupational Therapy

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust Speech and Language Therapy for Children

Primary Sidebar

Search the site

Find events, news, documents and more.

Patient transport in County Durham. Find out more.

Copyright © 2023 · County Durham CCG Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Manage Cookie Consent
We use cookies to optimise our website and our service.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}