Frequently Asked Questions

To register with our service, we require a referral from your GP. We need the GP to include a referral letter, with the reason for the referral, a medical summary, and two forms completed by you, the patient.

The forms we require depend on whether it is an Autism or ADHD referral.

These can be found and downloaded, along with further information on our Right to choose pages:

NHS Right to Choose Adult ADHD Assessments

NHS Right to Choose for Adult Autism Assessments

(Please note, if your referral is for a combined Autism and ADHD assessment, we would require all screening forms at the above links to be complete and sent with your GP referral)

Once these are received and if your referral is accepted, we will contact you to register with our service. Until this step is completed, you will not be added to our waiting list.

Unfortunately we are currently only able to provide medication titration for patients who have been seen and assessed by our service.

If you request to be added to the medication titration waiting list, there will be a period of time between your diagnosis and your first medication appointment. Waiting times are subject to change and are reviewed regularly. Please check our home page for the most up-to-date titration timeframes.

Please see our homepage for current wait times. All waiting times are estimates and cannot be guaranteed.

We will normally provide you with an opinion as to what could be an alternative explanation behind your difficulties and make recommendations for you and your GP to receive specific support to help you.

Yes, we are fully compliant with NICE guidance.

A qualified and experienced clinician with service oversight from a Consultant Psychiatrist.

Yes, it will as we are also an NHS-funded provider.

Shared care is an arrangement between Skylight Psychiatry and your GP whereby, once your medication has been stabilised, the ongoing prescribing of your ADHD medication is transferred to your GP under the NHS. This means that rather than returning to us for each prescription, your GP can issue your prescriptions as part of your routine primary care. It is important to understand that your GP is not obligated to agree to Shared Care as you are a private patient and not under the NHS, however, if this is something you’d like to consider, we will liaise directly with your GP practice on your behalf. We advise that you speak to your GP before commencing medication to see if they would be open to entering into Shared Care following medication stabilisation.

Yes QbCheck is included - this is a web-based, FDA-cleared test used to assess core ADHD symptoms – specifically inattention, impulsivity, and motor activity. It takes around 20 mins to complete and will be sent to you along with our pre-assessment questionnaires. You will need access to a laptop or computer to complete this.

There is an informant questionnaire that we ask for a named individual who knew you in childhood / early adolescence to complete. This isn't a compulsory step but does help with clinical diagnosis. If this is not completed, your clinician may request further information before a diagnostic outcome can be made. We will inform you of this during your assessment.

Appointments are routinely offered online. We may be able to offer an in-person assessment at one of our Clinic locations; however this is not guaranteed as it depends on clinician availability.

You can submit preferences for clinicians that we will do our best to accommodate.

After diagnosis all patients will receive a link to our ADHD resources. If you are diagnosed with ADHD and would like to begin medication titration, you can choose to book onto this.

To be considered for titration please complete the Explore Treatment with Medication form which is sent with your report.

Titration usually begins 24 weeks after you have completed this form.

Titration varies for everyone; you will need to be stable on a specific medication dose for a minimum of three appointments before we can transfer your care to your GP. Some patients will require multiple appointments to find the correct dosage for them. Appointments will be booked at 3–4-week intervals.

Whilst you are titrating onto medication, your appointments will need to be booked in 3-4 week intervals. You will also need an annual review of medication following successful titration, please see our fees schedule for annual review costs. If you are having ongoing side effects from your medication following titration, you can arrange to book in for an appointment with us. Please note this will incur a standard appointment fee of £180. Following this review, if you change medication dosage, you will need to be seen by our clinician again for a minimum of three appointments before you can move back over to shared care. This is because we need to ensure you are on a stable dose of medication before your GP takes over your care again.

We have a list of resources we will direct you to for alternative support.

Yes we can offer both.

We do not currently accept Private Medical Insurance.

Yes we accept Klarna pay – please see the Klarna Terms and Conditions

Yes all patients residing in England and are registered with an English GP practice. Please note we are not currently able to take on patients who reside and are registered with a GP in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.

Our cancellation / did not attend (DNA) policy is that we require 24hrs notice or a cancellation and we have the right to retain 50% of the total ADHD assessment fee. This would be £495 cancellation fee for a virtual assessment £600 cancellation fee for an in-person assessment. We will refund you the rest of the fee.

For all types of assessment with Skylight Psychiatry, we require a GP referral. This is important for the following reasons:

1) Your GP will first review whether a referral is appropriate.

2) Your GP will need to consider any physical health causes for your difficulties and whether any further investigations are needed before a  referral is made. Physical health issues can sometimes impact mental health. Some physical health conditions present with symptoms similar to those of neurodevelopmental disorders. For example, there are similarities between the symptoms of thyroid disorder and ADHD.

3) Your GP will provide important background information about you with the referral, including your medical history and an up-to-date list of your medications. This supports our clinicians in undertaking an accurate and holistic assessment.

4) For NHS Right to Choose assessments, a GP referral is essential for the referral to proceed due to invoicing arrangements.

5) Having your GP involved in your referral to our service makes it easier for us to work together to give you the best and safest care.

Once we have received your referral, it will be reviewed. We will decide if it is appropriate for our service, and if so, it will be triaged and processed. We will also consider whether we need to make any adjustments to our assessment process to help you engage. After this, we will contact you with further information about the assessment process and the next steps.

An Autism assessment is a complex and in-depth process. It involves gathering lots of information about you. This includes your strengths, current difficulties, social circumstances, and history. The assessment also includes a review of your mental health. We gather information from different sources including information about you when you were a child, from a parent/caregiver, and more information from a spouse or friend/colleague.

Yes, this is essential for safety and confidentiality purposes. Please bring ID and keep it on hand for the start of the appointment.

Yes for almost every appointment you have. The only exception is for the ADOS-2 appointment, there must be no interaction with your family member during this. If you really need them to be there for the appointment, we would ask that they sit outside of your view and that they do not engage in the appointment or speak with you. This is important because this appointment focuses on you speaking with the clinician only.

There is still a lot of work to be done for the Skylight Psychiatry team after your final appointment.

Our clinician/s will need to write up the report and it will go through a quality control check to review the reports.

For Autism Assessments, there is considerably more work to be done. We will be writing up all the reports for each appointment, then reviewing as a multi-disciplinary team.  Sometimes we require more information and other times we have enough information to conclude the diagnosis.

We value feedback from you about your experiences and you can provide this in the following ways:

• Telephone us on 03335771996
• By completing our feedback form via Doctify. You will receive a link during your assessment process and at the end.
• By emailing us on help@skylightpsychiatry.co.uk
• You can arrange to speak to a member of our team if you wish to give more feedback, and sometimes a member of our team may want to speak with you to get more information.

STOMP is an initiative set up by NHS England, and Skylight Psychiatry wholeheartedly supports this.

STOMP creates guidance that for some difficulties experienced by autistic people and /or people with a learning disability, medication isn’t always the answer. We should, as healthcare professionals try to understand why the person is experiencing difficulties and try to find meaningful solutions and strategies together. For example, if an autistic person is experiencing high levels of anxiety, the best approach is to better understand why they may feel anxious, and in what type of settings, then to create a plan that addresses the root cause, rather than immediately consider prescribing medication for anxiety. This means that the person will not be exposed to side effects from medication and by addressing root causes, their anxiety may also reduce.

In some cases, medication is appropriate and this should be discussed and agreed by the person.

STOMP does not apply to mental health conditions that have been diagnosed as the prescribing guidelines encourage medication treatment for certain mental health conditions.

We are currently unable to offer services to anyone under the age of 18 years.

We intend to open our children's service on a private basis (self-funded) shortly.

We currently do not have a date for offering Right to Choose assessments for children.

If you would like further information in regards to our self funded children's services, please let us know by emailing us at help@skylightpsychiatry.co.uk and we will add you to our waiting list.

We completely understand that this may happen. Our clinicians have experience of this, and will be understanding. They will do their best to reassure you, and you can take a break if you need, please tell the clinician.

If you remember what you wanted to say after the appointment, please write an email to us with the information that you wanted to share. You can email help@skylightpsychiatry.co.uk.

You will be assessed by a trained and appropriately skilled clinician. Our clinicians are all trained to deliver the specific assessment that you are having. We pride ourselves in having clinicians from different specialties and this includes psychiatrists, psychologists, clinical nurse specialists, neurodevelopmental specialists, speech and language therapists and occupational therapists.

You can find out more details about our clinicians in the ‘About us’ section on our website or within the pre-diagnostic support link that you receive.

There is parking available close to or on the site of all of our clinic locations. As we have a number of clinic locations, please take a look at our website and check the specific clinic details to get more information about parking.

This depends on the clinic location, but normally yes you should ring the bell outside the clinic door. Further details for specific clinic locations are available on our website. If you need specific information to access a clinic we will let you know.

The ADOS-2 appointment is an important ‘observational assessment’. This means an assessment of how you present in person. Therefore, in most circumstances, this appointment needs to be face-to-face. There are exceptional circumstances where a virtual appointment for this is needed and so in some cases, it will be conducted virtually.

The other appointments can be completed virtually and are not essential to be completed face-to-face.

We understand that this is not always possible, whether parents may be deceased or there is little or no contact, or when the person being assessed does not want parental involvement.

An Autism assessment requires some information about your early development and when you were younger. We can still proceed with the assessment and will forward you a developmental history questionnaire to complete by yourself and if you can speak to someone who knew you as a child whilst completing it, that would also be helpful. Further information can be gathered by providing your school reports if they are available.

No. The early developmental history appointment can only be completed by someone who knew you as a child, and specifically between the ages of 1-5.

The information from your partner is considered valuable and we will send an additional questionnaire to your partner for further information relating to the time that they have known you.

Please see our homepage for current wait times for your first appointment (from the point of your referral being accepted). All waiting times are estimates and cannot be guaranteed.

Report times are subject to change, and dependant on various factors, please contact us if it has been over 8 weeks since your assessment for an up to date timeframe.

You will receive a text message and/ or email confirming that your assessments have been completed. We will share the date by which you can expect to receive your final report.

You will receive a report with specific recommendations aimed to help you. Some of the recommendations will involve ‘signposting’ where we advise you to contact other services for additional support, and some of the recommendations are for you specifically and your GP.

We can offer three post-diagnostic support appointments to help you. These need to take place within 12 months of you receiving your report. We will require you to contact us on 03335771996 or by emailing us on help@skylightpsychiatry.co.uk to organise this. Post-diagnostic appointments can be used to go through your report with a clinician and ask questions. They can also be used to go through the completion of a Hospital Passport or to discuss an area of your life and how your Autism impacts you in more depth. For example, your employment or sensory needs.

We will normally provide you with an opinion as to what could be an alternative explanation behind your difficulties and make recommendations for you and your GP to receive specific support to help you. You are still able to request a post-diagnostic support session to discuss your report and ask any questions.

We are currently not accepting referrals for Mental Health Reviews.

You will normally be seen by a psychiatrist who will complete an initial assessment. This involves finding out more about your difficulties and asking you questions to better understand this, and review whether you may be suffering from a mental health condition. As part of this review, the psychiatrist will explore your past history and get to know about your life, home, medical history and social circumstances. This appointment can take place in person or virtually and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

At the end of the review, the psychiatrist will provide you with their opinions about an explanation behind your difficulties and whether it is caused by a mental health condition. The psychiatrist will then discuss and agree a treatment plan with you. We will send your report to you and your GP.

Yes we can, although we normally make a recommendation to your GP to start/change medication. It is important for your GP to be aware of medication changes  as we would hope that your GP continues prescribing for you and monitors your physical health as needed.

In the cases where we prescribe medications ourselves, these are private prescriptions and so you will need to pay the cost of the medication and not just the prescription cost.

Yes we can offer follow up appointments as and when needed.

We value all forms of feedback and take complaints seriously.

You can write a complaint and email it to us on help@skylightpsychiatry.co.uk, or telephone us on 0333 577 1996.

We understand that concerns can vary in seriousness. Wherever possible, we aim to resolve issues quickly and informally, without the need for a formal complaints process.

Many concerns can be addressed easily through discussion with our administrative or clinical team. This might include clarifying information, resolving a misunderstanding, or making small adjustments to your care. These informal concerns do not usually require a written investigation or formal outcome report.

If a concern cannot be resolved informally, or if you wish to raise a formal complaint, this will be handled in line with our complaints policy.

Once we receive a formal complaint, we will write to you within 3 working days to confirm receipt. A manager will be appointed to investigate your complaint. The manager may contact you to gather further information before beginning the investigation, which may involve speaking with you and relevant members of staff.

The outcome of a formal complaint is provided to you in writing following completion of the investigation.

You can find an overview of our process here:

Complaints Process (poster)

Our full policy is available here:

Complaints and Compliments Policy

The complaint is initially responded to within 3 working days to acknowledge receipt of it. Then the investigation is completed within 28 working days and outcome given to you.

Yes. We will not be sharing details of your complaint with outside organisations or parties, however in some instances, may need to share with certain organisations such as the CQC as a legal requirement.

We will discuss within our team about any outcomes of complaints and lessons learned in order to improve our processes. Even when sharing the lessons learned, we will not be sharing any identifiable information about the person who complained.

You can share your complaint with anyone at the service, including a clinician whom you have seen during an appointment, or contact us via email or telephone and ask to speak to a manager.

There are different grades to complaint investigations, the first stage is an internal investigation conducted by one of our managers. If you are unsatisfied with our response, you can tell us that you are unsatisfied and we will then implement stage 2, whereby the complaint is investigated by a Senior Manager. If you are still unhappy, the complaint can be escalated to Stage 3 with ISCAS for private patients, or PHSO for NHS patients.

Please let us know as soon as you notice any errors. You can email us with errors that you have noted on help@skylightpsychiatry.co.uk. Although we do our very best to ensure there are no errors in reports, sometimes, given the thorough and vast reports that we send, there may be some errors that arise.

We will then promptly amend the errors and send you an amended report.

You are entitled to a second opinion where a senior clinician will review your report and speak to you before concluding their opinion. You will then receive an updated report that includes the clinician’s second opinion.

We normally speak with you to check that you have given your consent for us to carry out the assessment. As part of this, we normally assume that someone is able to make the decision, but in some cases and for different reasons, a person may not be able to make the decision because of their mental health or some disabilities as examples. We then consider checking ‘capacity’ which is someone’s ability to make the decision, and we do this in line with the law of the ‘Mental Capacity Act’. This is to help ensure that you can make specific decisions around your treatment or care. If our clinician feels that you do not have capacity, then we follow the law and explore options to ensure that your decisions are respected and understood and we may think about ways to help you make the decision. Sometimes you may need more support before you can make these decisions and other times you may need help from a family member or an advocate. If you require an advocate then we can arrange this for you.

You can pay via BACS (bank transfer) or via Stripe if you intend on paying via credit card.

If you are having an assessment under the Right to Choose framework we invoice the NHS directly. You do not need to do anything regarding this payment.

We are currently unable to accept referrals from insurance providers.

For fee-paying patients:

Any cancellations before 48 hours of the appointment are fully refunded.

Cancellations between 24-48 hours are 50% refunded.

Cancellations within 24 hours are not normally refunded.

We will always work with you to support you to attend appointments and we understand that situations may arise when you are unable to attend an appointment. If you need to change or cancel your appointment we request that you do as with as much notice as possible. You can do this via email, phone or by clicking the cancel link on your appointment confirmation.

If you do not attend (DNA) an appointment, without cancelling, you may be discharged from the service. DNAs create difficulties for our clinicians. These are also wasted appointments in which we could be supporting other patients.

Keeping your personal data safe and secure is very important for us.

Your personal details will remain within our secure electronic patient records and are only accessible by the clinicians who are booked in to see you, and by our administrative and management team. We will only share information with your GP if you consent to it, and make contact with your parent/caregiver about one of the appointments if you consent to it.

Your consent is essential for us to share information.

There are some instances if we are really worried about your safety or that of others, that we may need to share information. We will normally make contact with you about this beforehand.