SEND Tutoring chats to Sarah Barlow a neurodivergent Speech and Language Therapist

Sarah Barlow is a neurodivergent Speech and Language Therapist, who decided to work in Autism diagnostics after getting her own diagnosis in 2022. She now works for the Owl Therapy Centre as part of their Autism Team.

She cares deeply about the importance of timely diagnosis and post-diagnostic support.

Ahead of time, we sent her these three questions:

• How does your training of being a speech and language therapist help you to diagnose autism?
• Does the diagnostic testing change when you assess an adult or child?
• What are some of the diagnostics you run to determine if someone has autism or not?

Sarah referred to the ‘male brain’ which I looked up after we’d said goodbye to each other and Google said it was – At the male end is the tendency to ‘systemize,’ or to recognize patterns and understand natural and technical systems, such as the weather or a computer. The theory broadly proposes that autistic people, no matter their sex, tend to be at the systemizing end of the continuum — that is, they have an ‘extreme male brain.

Sarah mentioned that when she was training in 2020 to become an autism assessor, research from decades ago was still being used. This has worrying implications that stereotypes like the ‘male brain’ theory still inform students of today and people’s opinions of autism are narrow and outdated.

Sarah also mentioned ADOS and CAT-Q which are explained below:

ADOS stands for – The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule it’s one of the few standardized diagnostic measures that involves scoring direct observations of the child’s interactions and that accounts for the developmental level and age of the child.

The Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire (CAT-Q) is a self-report measure of social camouflaging behaviours in adults. It may be used to identify autistic individuals who do not currently meet diagnostic criteria due to their ability to mask their autistic proclivities.

Thank you for coming on to the podcast Sarah!

If you have any questions on the topics discussed in this podcast, or are looking for help finding a specialist one-to-one tutor for your child, book a free consultation with us today, we’ll be happy to help.