NHS Right to Choose:

Yes. 

Psychiatry UK now accepts NHS Right to Choose autism referrals for children and young people aged 8 to 18.

There is currently no waiting list for our Children and Young People’s Autism Service. 

We have separate information for: 

Children aged 8–10

Young people aged 11–18

If young person is aged over 17 years 9 months, they will be referred to our Adult Autism Service. 

We continue to experience unprecedented demand for referrals for both our adult ADHD and autism services, which has inevitably created waiting lists for assessments. 

Please click here for our current waiting times. Our Customer Support team is unable to give any more information on waiting times over the phone or via our webchat, so please wait to be contacted by us.

If you are already registered with us, we will contact you by email and portal note to arrange the appointment, so please keep looking out for Psychiatry UK emails.

Under the present terms of our contracts we can only see adults under RTC. We do, of course, have child and adolescent specialists available on a private basis.  

 Children can very often be diagnosed through the Children and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) via school referral.  

You can self-refer through our Private Adult Autism Service. View more details here.

Or to apply for an autism referral under Right to Choose, please ask your GP to be referred to us – Psychiatry UK.

Assuming that your GP is refusing to refer you due to funding concerns and not a clinical reason, you can ask them to read the NHS information governing patient choice.  

Common causes of confusion are the fact that we are not commissioned by your Integrated Care Board (ICB), which is not relevant, or that the GP is only aware of applying through an IFR (Individual Funding Request) and asking the ICB for permission first, which again, is not necessary.  

If you have any further questions, please reach out to our customer support team via our Virtual Assistant.  

Your GP does not need to get prior approval for your referral from the local Integrated Care Board (ICB) and we do not need to seek their approval before starting your treatment.  

 Once we receive the referral from your GP, we will contact you and ask you to complete some further questionnaires. We will then arrange an appointment for you to be assessed by one of our ASD specialist doctors.  

Right to Choose can apply to different areas of NHS healthcare, but you can only choose a provider that offers the relevant NHS-funded service. 

Psychiatry UK’s NHS Right to Choose services currently include: 

• Adult ADHD assessment and medication treatment. 

• Adult autism assessment. 

• Autism assessment for children and young people aged 8 to 17 years and 8 months. 

We are planning to offer alternative treatments such as coaching and therapy in the future, but these are not currently available through Psychiatry UK.  

You must be living in England and have a GP in England at the point of referral, assessment and treatment to be eligible for RTC. If you move and register with a GP outside England, you will need to be referred to a local autism service, or you can pay for a private assessment.  

Unfortunately, the Right to Choose rules cannot be used to swap provider mid-treatment.  If you are unhappy with your existing care, you will need to reach a resolution with your current provider. 

No. We can only invoice the ICB from the date of the referral. 

You can seek a second opinion through Right to Choose, but if you have previously been assessed by a different provider, we will require your GP to provide us with the previous report and related correspondence.

However, please note that if  your assessment was performed by Psychiatry UK, we cannot offer you a second opinion under RTC through our service.