Adults

The Leeds Autism Diagnostic Service (LADS) provides assessment and diagnosis of people of all intellectual ability, who may have autism and live in Leeds. The assessment is provided by a team of mental health and learning disability professionals with specialist knowledge of autism.

The service will accept referrals from Healthcare Professionals and also directly from individuals (self-referral) who would like an autism assessment.  They will receive referrals for all adults over the age of 18 years regardless of their IQ. This includes people who also have a learning disability or other developmental conditions.

You can expect to wait around 20 month for a first appointment.

If you have had an initial appointment, you can expect to wait no more than 27 months for your assessment to be complete. However, many assessments are completed in a much shorter timeframe. 

The service is currently prioritising reducing the lengh of time assessments take once they have started. 

Please note that these are average figures. Your own waiting time may be shorter or longer than this. 

Visit LADS 

Children and adolescents

You can talk to the following people if you think a child you know may be autistic:

• your GP or health visitor
  
  
• your child or young person’s early years setting (nursery, preschool or childminder),
  school or college

They will be able to advise you and either make a referral, or direct you to another
practitioner to make a referral, for assessment and diagnosis if they think this is
needed.

Read Leeds City Council's guide to services for young people on the autistic spectrum for more information about the help and support available in the city. 

Private Diagnosis

With pressures on health services and longer waiting times, more people are turning towards private diagnosis. 

Finding the right service isn't always easy, especially when it can cost a lot of money to get a private diagnosis. 

Thankfully, Leeds Autism AIM have produced an accessible guide to accessing private diagnosis. 

The guide is a four-page document which has useful information on:

• Accessing a private autism assessment
• How to choose a service
• The assessment tools they might use

Download the Guide

Find Out More

Because autism is present from birth, it can often be diagnosed in childhood. However, it is often only recognised later in life. Understanding of autism has grown over time, so more people are now being diagnosed when they’re older if the signs weren’t recognised when they were children.

Click the button below to find out more about the signs someone may be autistic, and how autism is diagnosed. 

About diagnosis