CHILDREN in Bury are waiting up to 18 months to be diagnosed with autism.

Health chiefs and autism specialists were called before the council’s scrutiny board to explain how they were trying to reduce this waiting time for families.

The board heard how new processes have already been implemented, which are already reducing waiting times and that the group which reviews cases will be meeting twice as often in future.

John Bainbridge, from Pennine Acute Hospital Trust, said: “There’s no national standard for the time for diagnosis, it isn’t measured. Some organisations will count it, some won’t so it’s difficult to benchmark ourselves.

“We did a search and found a study from a few years ago of 1,000 parents, it said the national average wait is 3.6 years, we’re talking about 18 months to diagnosis.

“We’re not putting this here to say we’re doing well it’s just to set some context.”

In a presentation from bodies including Bury Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and Pennine Acute Hospital Trust, the board heard there had been a marked rise in the number of children and young people needing autism spectrum disorder reviews by a panel called the Social Communication Disorder Discussion Group.

This group meets every two months, in the near future it will meet every month to clear the backlog of reviews and keep on top of them.

In Bury in 2012/13 75 children were referred to the group for a diagnosis compared to 144 in 2017/18.

Dr Cathy Fines, a clinical director at Bury CCG, told the board the medical knowledge about autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was improving all the time and more and more people were being diagnosed.

She said currently around 1 in 100 children had ASD and four times as many boys as girls.

Dr Fines added: “That might change, it might be that girls are better at hiding the symptoms, things are evolving all the time.”

She added that autism symptoms can vary drastically between different children and some will not be referred by their school or parents until later in life, such as when they reach secondary school.

The varying symptoms present a challenge for clinicians looking to diagnose children, Dr Fines said its not like diabetes where a person either has it or does not, it takes a multitude of clinical decisions.

The board heard how the referral services were being streamlined and better information was being given to patients whose children had been referred to investigate a possible autism diagnosis.

David Latham, programme manager at Bury CCG, said such actions had already helped reduce the waiting between a child being referred and their first appointment from more than 18 weeks to eight to nine weeks.

He added: “The focus is on that 18 month wait to diagnosis, which we know is unacceptable, we know we need to improve it”