Autism Referrals - FOI Response Register

I would like to request the following information: 

1. The average waiting time from referral from a GP to an initial assessment appointment for autism diagnosis, in days, with data to be taken from the most recent year available. 

Adults: The average waiting time from referral from a GP to an initial assessment appointment for autism diagnosis for the financial year 2023-2024 was 548 days.

Children: Only 1 child assessed in the financial year 2023-2024 was referred for an autism diagnosis by a GP. This child waited 422 days from referral to an initial assessment appointment.

2. The number of referrals from a GP to an autism diagnosis service for the following financial years: 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2021-2021, 2021-2022, 2022-23. Data to be broken down by gender if possible.

Adults

Children

Under FOISA s 12(1), NHS Shetland is not obliged to comply with a request if the estimated cost of doing so exceeds £600.  Having reviewed your request, NHS Shetland has determined that the cost of compliance would exceed £600 and so is unable to provide the information requested; we have provided a breakdown of the estimated costs below:

Data set incomplete: the referral source was only recorded in individual files prior to 2021 and not recorded elsewhere.  To gather this data would require manually reviewing individual autism referrals received prior to 2021. Approximately 194 referrals would need to be checked. We estimate this would take 42 hours (42 x £15 = £630)

Please note the majority of autism referrals do not come from GPs for adults or children.