Testimonials

Assessments

Thank you for such an incredibly affirming and supportive experience. I am so grateful for everything you do to ensure it's a gentle experience, and I felt very safe and able to be myself. I honestly can’t think of a single thing I’d improve about the experience with you both. You are clearly delivering a gold standard. I was very happy and moved by the report I received. It was so thoughtfully and even lovingly crafted, it was the exemplar of how an autism assessment report should be done. I felt so seen, understood, validated and accepted.

My daughter’s autism assessment was carried out by Dr Charlotte Chapman and Nicola McNamara (Charli and Nic). It was a wonderfully positive experience from beginning to end. I asked lots of questions before our assessment regarding the assessment of autistic girls and they able to answer and reassure me that their process would be thorough and that they understand how autism presents in girls. On the day itself it felt like a celebration of our daughter and Charli and Nic were friendly, respectful and professional throughout. We learnt a lot and came away with new ways to support our daughter. Afterwards we received a thorough and useful report and a follow up review. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them to any family looking for an autism assessment and if I’m looking for support for my daughter in the future this is the first place that I would turn to. I was sad when the process was over and had to say goodbye!

Cannot praise Nic & Jenni highly enough. The loveliest of people. Communication couldn’t have been better. Nic was our first and main contact and is amazing and Jenni equally as fab and lovely. We felt totally comfortable in their care. Went above and beyond to understand our son and ensure his needs were met. Excellent at what they do. Totally focused on helping the young person and us as a family. Their enthusiasm for making a difference is infectious. We have learnt so much! 10/10. Couldn’t have asked for more. Would definitely use their services again.

We decided to use Nic for a private autism assessment for our son. From the initial chat with her we felt confident the process would be smooth and sensitively managed. Attending the assessment day, my son was made to feel relaxed and at ease and he was given a lot of 'fun' games and tasks to do. Nic and her colleague asked us questions in an empathetic manner and we could take breaks whenever we needed. Nic also chatted to my son's teachers to delve deeper into some of the assessment areas, ensuring she left no stone unturned in her ability to provide us with a positive diagnosis and a highly tailored report personalised to our child. We now have the clear guidance we need to support our son and empower him with the tools to allow him to flourish. We would highly recommend Autism Empowered if you're considering a private diagnosis. Thank you Nic.

This is me package

My son and I worked with Nic over a few weeks with the package ‘This is me’. Nic was very accommodating and understood my sons needs and identified what support would help. The identified needs were very clear and easy to embed into my son’s school day. The book supported my son in recognising his strengths which has helped him to identify how we are all different and good at different things. It was a pleasure working with Nic to help support my son’s needs.

Nic worked with my 10 year old son who is autistic and has been struggling with his differences and positive thinking around that. I reached out to Nic to really help him see and realise that he has many amazing strengths and being different is ok – we are all different and that is a good thing. We did 4 sessions with Nic doing the ‘This is me’ programme and really feel that those sessions had a real positive impact on Max to recognise some of his amazing abilities and to understand that having autism isn’t a bad thing (his word not mine). Nic engaged so well with him sometimes in quite difficult situations as Max really does struggle with connecting with new people, often hiding and not speaking, but Nic with positive encouragement and the use of various strategies really did get the some great input and response from him. I would wholeheartedly recommend working with Nic and only wish we could work with her for longer.

Personalised post-diagnostic support

I recently used the services of Autism Empowered following some difficulties I was having at work. I felt that my workplace didn’t really understand the particular needs that I had and often simply didn’t believe that my condition would change according to the environment and other factors. I had a consultation with Nic McNamara to discuss how I could get this across effectively in a way that dealt with my needs but also dealt with the fact that my autism was also a positive issue for my role as a lawyer. Given that my ability to communicate this had been problematic thus far, Nic completed a written report for me to present to my workplace and also accompanied me to a meeting with my manager and HR representative to discuss these changes. My consultations with Nic really helped me understand a lot more about my autism and how it affected me as well as what help I needed to ask for to be successful in my workplace. Nic is extremely knowledgeable and a fantastic advocate. I can’t thank her enough.

Nic did an amazing job of really helping me to understand what being autistic means for me personally. She helped me to realise why I was finding certain things at work and home so difficult – I had some real lightbulb moments in our session but she was also able to offer useful and easily implementable strategies that she then explained to my boss within my workplace and that have made a real difference to my wellbeing and productivity.

It was really good that the first visit was a dog walk to make it easier to be able to engage. Nic has been incredibly adaptable when appointments needed to be altered or moved to online at short notice. Nic made me understand it was perfectly acceptable to ask for reasonable adjustments. Nic helped me to understand burnout and how to deal with it. Nic suggested some great reading - Avoiding Anxiety in Autistic Adults by Luke Beardon. This was useful because it helped me to understand that the anxiety I had was to do with my environment rather than inherent in me, and so I understood better how to reduce anxiety.

As parents of an autistic child (albeit now an adult) it has helped our understanding of Autism and this in turn has helped our understanding of our son. He has talked about things in sessions, which we didn’t know about, such as hating been given praise.