No! Simply fill out the form located on our home page with what your needs are and we will reach out within our network to find the right professional for you.

Yes! Just email us at: info@acfbfund.org.nz and let us know what isn’t working for you and what would help make the situation better and we will attempt to rematch you with another professional.

You can apply to access funding from The ACFB Fund by completing the application form found on this link:

Apply for funding

If you already have an ACFB Fund approved therapist then you can work with them to help you complete your application.

The ACFB Fund is available for assisting anyone with the need to access mental health resources and support who do not meet criteria for funding in other places such as WINZ, ACC, Gumboot Friday, EAP, or other local NGOs.

We are dedicated to helping people with disabilities, low income, people who live rurally, ethnic and indigenous people, those who lack access to services in their area, and those who have exhausted other funding options. 

It is asked that you give your professional as much notice as possible when needing to change or cancel an appointment. It is expected that you give a minimum of 48 hours notice or the appointment will be considered a no-show.

Should you no-show to a scheduled appointment, you run the risk of having your application and any further funding denied and/or your application cancelled.

For any pre-paid Psychological Service, including the ADHD/ Autism Assessment Program, you will be invoiced $100 for the missed appointment and will be unable to receive any reports until this balance is paid.

First and foremost, please remember we are real people receiving these complaints. Profanity, abuse, and attacks on staff members or professionals will NEVER be tolerated. If you engage in this sort of behaviour, you will be removed from the program and will not be allowed to apply again for our support.

If you do need to make a complaint, simply email us at: info@acfbfund.org.nz with as much information as possible to give us a clear picture of what’s going on so we can figure out how best to help. We don’t want unhappy clients or professionals so we will do our best to resolve and/or make amends for any potential wrongdoing. 

We take complaints VERY seriously and often can resolve them within hours to a couple days, depending on the complexity of the situation. Again, the more information you can give us (emails, screenshots, recordings, etc) the better so we can see exactly what has gone wrong and work towards a solution together.

We typically conduct one intake appointment to gather a thorough history and conduct behavioural observations and mental status examination. That, along with the extensive testing measures you complete prior to your appointment, provides us with the information we need to determine whether or not you meet criteria for a diagnosis.

All our psychologists are qualified to conduct these assessments and assign or rule out a diagnosis. Since there are no set standards for these reports, each provider has the right to review and determine whether or not to accept the report. 

As such, we cannot guarantee that a given provider accepts our report. However, we hold ourselves to a high clinical standard and have a high rate of success. We have also partnered with the Nelson Clinic, who has agreed to accept our reports due to their high quality. We are also willing to consult directly with a provider to answer questions about our process and ensure that our report meets their standards. 

We highly recommend you consult with your psychiatrist before applying for funding with us to determine if they have any specific requirements for your evaluation or report.

Our clinical director, Dr. Amy Marschall, fully understands how women and girls are often underdiagnosed and missed when displaying ADHD and/or autistic traits. She knows this both from her extensive clinical training and her first-hand experience as an AuDHD woman who was initially misdiagnosed.

Following her own misdiagnosis, Dr. Marschall built templates and assessment protocols specifically designed to catch those missed by providers who do not have this understanding.

Our psychologists are trained on cultural competency, understanding masking, varying ways that symptoms can present, and assessing complex cases. We also have multiple members in the team with lived experience of autism and ADHD.

No, we do not require a referral from elsewhere, but as mentioned before we highly recommend you consult with your psychiatrist or other specialists before applying for funding with us to determine if they have any specific requirements for your evaluation or report.

We are a fully telehealth program, so everything is done online. There is a wealth of research that shows that appropriately-trained psychologists can assess ADHD, autism, and many other conditions via telehealth if they have appropriate expertise in telehealth as a method of service delivery, and we require such training for all of our psychologists.

This depends on the provider. With appropriate training, a diagnosis of autism can be determined with one appointment and appropriate corroborating data, which we collect from you prior to your intake.

Our clinical team consists of psychologists with various skills and experiences. However, we are psychologists, not medical doctors or psychiatrists. We are unable to prescribe medication for ADHD or any other diagnosis. We can provide information about whether or not you meet the criteria for a diagnosis of ADHD.

Many people with ADHD benefit from medication intervention for their symptoms. However, a psychologist does not determine which medication (if any) is appropriate for an individual. With consent, we can forward your diagnosis to your GP, psychiatrist, our preferred referrer, The Nelson Clinic, or other healthcare provider. However, we cannot and would not tell a prescriber what they should or should not prescribe.

In other words, we cannot guarantee what options your prescriber will or will not offer you based on our diagnosis.

If you have questions about your medication options, I strongly encourage you to talk to your GP about who would prescribe medication if you were diagnosed with ADHD and what their requirements are for a psychological report in order to access medication options.

Current telehealth research shows that diagnostic psychological assessments can be conducted via video with comparable accuracy to in-person appointments.

All of our psychologists are trained in conducting telehealth assessments. In fact, many of our clients have mentioned that they prefer the telehealth option, and how much more accessible our assessments are.

Once you have paid in full for your assessment, your intake will be scheduled for within 6-10 weeks.

Urgent or emergency appointments are available for those choosing to pay an additional fee. This ensures a video appointment with a Psychologist and completed reports back to you within 2 weeks .

Fees need to be paid in full before we confirm any appointments or send any questionnaires. You will need to complete your questionnaires prior to your scheduled appointment to allow the process to keep moving quickly.

Yes, you can use our diagnosis in these applications and for a needs assessment. We do not conduct the needs assessment.

We conduct a thorough diagnostic interview to gather background information and observational data, which is one appointment.

In addition to the diagnostic interview where you share your history, we use the following measures for autism and ADHD evaluations for adults:

• The MMPI-3 and MCMI-IV are personality measures that give us a big picture of any mental health issues or ways that you fall outside of the range of “typical.” They weren’t designed for autism specifically, but within the context of your history they can speak to the presence of autistic traits. They can also give us information about any mental health issues you’re experiencing that might require support.
• The Social Responsiveness Scale is a measure that was designed for identifying autism in adults that provides ratings that can indicate if someone’s presentation is consistent with the diagnostic criteria for autism.
• The Ritvo Autism Asperger Diagnostic Scale Revised was developed by autistic researchers who wanted to develop a scale that caught autistic traits in individuals who tended to get a false negative on other measures. (It was initially developed before the term “Aspergers” was retired.)
• The Self-Assessment of Autistic Traits is a similar scale that was developed recently, again by autistic researchers wanting to improve self-report measures of autistic experiences.
• The Sensory Symptom Checklist looks at over-responsiveness and under-responsiveness for sensory sensitivities that many autistic people experience.
• The Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire assesses for masking and was developed by autistic researchers. It is not as diagnostically helpful as others but can speak to how much masking may be occurring.
• The Conners Adult ADHD Rating Scales, Second Edition, assesses for ADHD traits in adults. It has a self-report and observer form so we can compare your experience to how you appear to someone who knows you well.
• The Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale and Copeland AADD are screening measures that determine if the symptom count for ADHD is present and how severe these symptoms are.

We may send some additional screening measures based on things that come up during intake.

We don’t have a phone number published right now,  however our info team are able to answer any questions, and our clinical team often are able to clarify any of your concerns around assessments. If need be, we can arrange a Zoom or Google Meet.

You can find our Refund Policy Here: 

Refund and Returns Policy