As Kent's Autism and ADHD Bill Passes £29m, a West Kent School Pilot Is Showing Rare Signs of Working

NHS Kent and Medway's own board papers, presented to the Integrated Care Board on 22 September, show its spending on autism and ADHD assessment and treatment has rocketed from £640,000 in 2023/24 to £28.91 million in 2025/26 - and is forecast to hit £32.1 million this year, £12.1 million over the opening budget. Every figure in that report is given for the whole of Kent and Medway; none of it is broken down by borough. But a scheme first tested years ago in a Tunbridge Wells school, then scaled up across every mainstream primary and secondary in Maidstone, is the one place where a public body's own data shows the pressure on assessment waiting lists actually easing - while demand everywhere else in the county keeps climbing.

The ICB's board paper describes demand for autism and ADHD assessment as "substantially above commissioned capacity" across children, young people and adults in Kent and Medway. It blames rapid growth in NHS Right to Choose provider activity, long waits, fragmented pathways and inconsistent provider reporting. The 2026/27 opening budget of £20.02 million was set below the previous year's actual spend and didn't fully account for backlog commitments or continued market growth; the most likely forecast outturn is now £32.1 million, with a worst case higher still. Demand is roughly split 55% children and young people to 45% adults, though the ICB cautions its own dataset here is incomplete. The board rates its overall residual risk on this budget line as HIGH.

"This is Me" isn't a diagnosis - it's a structured conversation between school staff and a family that builds a profile of a neurodivergent child's strengths and needs, so school support doesn't have to wait for a formal assessment. According to NHS Kent and Medway's own description of the programme, it was introduced "several years ago" at The Wells Free School in Tunbridge Wells, before Maidstone became the first area in Kent to roll it out borough-wide: every one of its 60 mainstream schools, covering roughly 30,000 pupils, with 20 schools live by January 2025 and 58 of the 60 live by April 2025. It's jointly backed by Kent County Council and the ICB, building on a successful ICB-funded pilot and a national Department for Education programme. Every participating school received two days of training in holding what the council calls "strengths and needs conversations" with families.

Kent County Council's own scrutiny papers, presented in January, track referrals for neurodevelopmental assessment in Maidstone against Dartford, used deliberately as a control area with no pilot running. Both areas saw referrals climb through the winter, but Maidstone's fell away sharply once the rollout reached near-full coverage in April 2025, dropping close to zero by August - while Dartford's stayed higher for longer before declining more gradually. On the harder measure, requests for statutory Education, Health and Care needs assessments, Maidstone saw a 9.66% rise over the year, against Kent's county-wide average of 11%, and its rate of requests per pupil - 1.6% - is among the lowest of any district in Kent. Measured over two years rather than one, the council says Maidstone has shown "very little increase in Requests, compared to the majority of Kent Districts." A family survey after the pilot found 89% of parents who received a needs summary and support reported a positive experience, and 68% said they'd gone on to use what they'd learned in situations beyond school.

The council is careful not to overclaim: its own report notes that "further triangulation is underway to substantiate" the link between the pilot and the drop in referrals, and this remains one scheme, in two areas, still being evaluated rather than a settled finding.

This academic year the programme has moved on to Swale, where the council says it's been "very enthusiastically received," with findings being shared countywide. NHS Kent and Medway says the plan is to extend it across all of Kent and Medway in stages from early 2027, each area establishing it fully before the next begins. Separately, the ICB is recommissioning its adult neurodevelopmental pathway around a "support-first" model built on four pillars - self-management, keyworker and community support, diagnostic, and intensive support - and had issued Personal Health Budgets to 103 children and young people still waiting for an ASD or ADHD assessment as of the September board meeting. That figure, like almost everything else in the ICB's own paperwork, is reported only for Kent and Medway as a whole.

Until the ICB starts publishing its own figures at a finer grain than "Kent and Medway," the Maidstone-Dartford comparison is one of the only local pictures either public body currently makes available - and it happens to point back to a programme that started on West Kent's own doorstep.

Source: NHS Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board, Board (Part 1) agenda and papers, 22 September 2026, item 13.0, "Autism and ADHD Assessment Pathways"; Kent County Council, Scrutiny Committee, "SEND Scrutiny - Education Health and Care Plans," 22 January 2026; NHS Kent and Medway, "This is Me"