Autism Evaluation Price Increase

Questions about the recent price increase? Here are some answers. Let us know if you have any questions that are not addressed here.

Your price used to be less, why is it more now?

NDCW is dedicated to provide evaluations that are thorough, individualized, and provide the space and time for you to be heard and understood. We take the time to score multiple assessments, take the results, and review them within the context of your individual experience. Then we take the time to go over those results, any resulting diagnoses, recommendations, and resources with you so that you understand what you filled out, what the results mean, how those results relate to your experience, and how you can use that information moving forward. We design these evaluations as both an evaluation to explore a diagnosis of autism and also to have an affirming, validating, and informative experience. Due to this increased time devoted to providing a comprehensive and individualized experience, we've needed to adjust our fees accordingly.

Additionally, we also offer payment plans, structure the evaluation to fit your needs (both financial and processing style), and can split the virtual face-to-face portions into shorter appointments if needed to reduce sensory overwhelm.

What do you mean by thorough and comprehensive?

Pre-screeners

Before you even start the evaluation and before you pay any fee, you complete multiple pre-screeners that look at different aspects of autism, masking, executive functioning, and your emotional experience. We score these pre-screeners and briefly review them with you. Many evaluators charge you for this screening portion. Since we use free to the public screeners, we have chosen to provide this service free of cost, despite the time behind the scenes scoring them and reaching out to you.

Multiple Assessments

If the pre-screeners support continuing on to the formal evaluation, then we continue to the paid portion which includes multiple more assessments. These assessments cover aspects such as social interaction, sensory experiences, executive functioning, stimming, emotional regulation, personality characteristics, and factors that may lead to missing a diagnosis of autism, such as high levels of masking. We gather information about your history, your passions, your struggles, and your skills. We also, with your written permission, gather information from a source/s close to you. Having friends and/or family share their experience can be very beneficial, though certainly not required as an adult seeking a diagnosis.

Report

While you are completing those assessments, we are scoring them and connecting all of this information with who you are as a person and how you have shown us you interact with and experience the world. Then we take all of that and write a comprehensive report, typically totaling 16 to 20 pages, that states the results in the technical format expected in a formal evaluation report and that discusses those scores as supporting features of your experience, your words- who you are. We break them down one by one so that you can see how the many different pieces fit together and validate you as a human and not just a document listing some scores and a final diagnosis.

Post-Review

You receive this lengthy document after the review, along with a diagnostic letter (if applicable), and you may request a condensed version of the report if needed as well. You can also schedule follow-up appointments if you have lingering questions after the review or want to revisit the information at a later date. Journeys of self-exploration don't always follow typical timelines and sometimes need time to process!

What makes your selection of assessments different?

As mentioned before, we review our assessments with you in more detail and provide a longer report than many evaluators. In addition, we administer more assessments than typical and we work towards choosing evaluations that are more affirming of the autistic experience.

Why do we do so many assessments? Isn't it quicker and cheaper to do less? Well, sure. However, that reduces the information that we receive that allows us to take context into consideration and makes it a lot easier for a diagnosis of autism to be missed when it is actually there.

Many clients come to us because they are already at risk of being misdiagnosed. They may be high maskers, highly intelligent, members of a marginalized community, have extreme sensory needs, or experience high demand avoidance, etc. To truly explore and honor the diversity of autism and the uniqueness of who you are and where you may fit within the diversity of autism (or not), we explore as many of those areas that we can. We want to see both the details and the big picture.

Do I have to pay all at once? It is a lot of money.

Definitely not. Many clients have chosen to do payment plans in order to pay the fees. This has been structured in individualized ways to honor the different needs of our clients. Some clients have broken the evaluation process such that they can pay a little bit each week, every two weeks, once a month, and even every other month.

How does that work? You explore how spread out and how much you can pay at each payment time. Then we take that information and the different steps involved in the evaluation and structure the evaluation process to fit in your payment schedule. This may mean that you do 1-2 of the online self-report forms with your first payment, then 1 longer one for the next, 1 face-to-face virtual session with the next, etc. Your last payment will always coincide with the report review session so you'll know about when to expect that to occur. We can provide examples of payment plans if requested. NDCW strives to be as accessible as we can while also paying our own bills!

Now that it is more money, does that mean that I can use this evaluation towards an application for social security disability?

Social security disability determination has its own requirements for who can diagnosis what and what counts towards an eligible evaluation. It is not likely that an autism diagnosis by NDCW will be honored. We typically do not complete autism evaluations if that is your goal, so that you can dedicate your expenses to an evaluation that is more likely to be accepted by social security.