The ‘Island factor’ has affected the autism services available on the Isle of Wight, an experienced practitioner has said.
Louise Lawrence, who grew up on the Island, runs Autism Unravelled, a multi-disciplinary diagnostic service in London. She said the ‘isolation’ of the Isle of Wight could be part of the problem in setting up a new service.
She said:
“You need the diagnosis to be able to access the services but they aren’t able to get that.
“I know the Island is a little bit isolated. The same services aren’t always available.
“It’s really important we talk about those long waiting lists.”
Long delays
There could be more than 400 children waiting for an autism diagnosis by the time a full service is rolled out in April next year.
Lengthy delays implementing a service means hundreds of children have been waiting over two years for a diagnosis.
However, the Isle of Wight Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) has said it hopes to implement short-term measures to clear a backlog of more than 200 cases in the next seven months.
Interim service provider
The CCG has secured an interim service with provider Psicon Ltd, which has committed to undertaking and completing 150 assessments by March 2019. It has also secured a pilot with Helios Ltd to deliver 50 online autism assessments commencing September 2018.
The CCG said it anticipated 200 cases would be cleared by March 2019.
Scale of assessments prohibitive
Siobhan Aubin, from Bridges For Learning, said the organisation was approached by the CCG to take on the contract but it had to turn it down as it could not cope with the scale required — 15 assessments a week.
Ms Aubin said:
“The high number of assessments in the short-term meant we could not provide the service as a single provider.”
Bridges For Learning will continue to work towards the launch of a private service at the end of September.
Insufficient capacity to clear waiting list
In a report, due to be seen by the CCG board tomorrow (Thursday), concerns have been raised about the insufficient capacity in the short-term to clear the waiting list by the end of March.
The trust service may be further delayed due to issues in recruiting. So far, the trust has recruited Professor Jeremy Turk, who will be working two days a week to clear the backlog and prioritise new assessments.
This article is from the BBC’s LDRS (Local Democracy Reporter Service) scheme, which OnTheWight is taking part in. Some additions by OnTheWight. Ed
Image: PrintKick Ltd under CC BY 2.0
