Next month I'm presenting to a board of CAMHS Consultant Psychiatrists. I don't want the room to hear only my professional view — I want it to hear yours.
Next month, I have been invited to present to a board of CAMHS Consultant Psychiatrists working across the NHS and private practice — leading consultants in the assessment and diagnosis of ADHD and autism.
There’s one message I want to put firmly on the table: a diagnosis is stage one. It cannot be the final destination.
A diagnosis can provide answers. It can help a family finally understand why their child experiences the world differently. But then what?
The report is issued. The family receives a copy. School receives a copy. The child now has a recognised diagnosis. And too often, that’s where the process quietly ends.
Who explains to the teacher what that child’s ADHD looks like at 10am in a classroom? Who identifies the academic gaps that may have built up while that child struggled to access learning? Who looks at processing, working memory, sensory needs, communication, anxiety and behaviour together, as one picture, rather than as separate boxes on separate forms? And who supports an already overstretched school to actually put the right provision in place?
Through my work with SEND families, schools, local authorities and consultant-led diagnostic services, this is the gap I see repeatedly. It isn’t a failure of any one professional. It’s a gap in the pathway itself — the space between a clinical finding and a workable, individual plan for that child’s classroom.
I’m also deeply concerned about what happens as access to some NHS diagnostic pathways becomes increasingly restricted or difficult to navigate. If families are already struggling to reach stage one — diagnosis — what happens to everything that’s supposed to come after it? A pathway problem at the start makes the gap at the end even more urgent to fix.
I don’t want this presentation to carry only my professional view. I want the people actually living this to be represented too.
If you’re a parent or carer, a SENCO, a teacher, a SEND professional, a healthcare professional, someone still waiting for assessment, or someone whose child has already been diagnosed — I’d like to know what you believe is missing from the current pathway.
And the question that matters most: if you had five minutes with some of the leading Consultant Psychiatrists diagnosing ADHD and autism in this country, what would you want them to hear?
Share your experience with Education With Lauren. I’ll be using the recurring themes families and professionals share with me to help shape this presentation, so that when I walk into that room next month, I’m taking the voices of SEND families themselves — not just presenting what professionals think families need.
Share Your ExperienceDiagnosis matters enormously. It’s very often the piece a family has waited longest for, and fought hardest to get. But diagnosis → understanding → appropriate provision → meaningful support has to become the whole pathway, not just its first step.
This is the thinking behind the Education With Lauren Gap Analysis Assessment and Provision Map — taking a diagnosis and turning it into an individual, practical plan a school can actually use, rather than leaving a family to work out what happens next on their own.
A happy, understood child, and a teacher who isn’t left to work out how to meet that child’s needs alone — that’s the foundation outstanding outcomes are actually built on.
Lauren Robson QTS SEND
Founder, Education With Lauren
Why isn’t a diagnosis enough on its own?
A diagnosis identifies what a child has clinically. It doesn’t translate that into what a specific child needs in their specific classroom — which is a separate, and often missing, step.
What should happen after my child receives an ADHD or autism diagnosis?
Ideally, the diagnosis is followed by an assessment of how it’s actually affecting the child’s learning — academic gaps, processing, sensory and behavioural needs — translated into a practical plan the school can put into action.
Is Education With Lauren involved in diagnosis itself?
No. Education With Lauren works alongside consultant-led diagnostic services and focuses on what comes after diagnosis — understanding a child’s educational needs and building the provision plan schools need to support them.
This article reflects Lauren Robson’s professional experience and views ahead of a presentation to CAMHS Consultant Psychiatrists. Experiences shared with Education With Lauren may be used, anonymised, to inform that presentation.
“Diagnosis matters enormously. It cannot be the final destination.”