NHS Highland is disputing an Inverness teenager’s autism diagnosis despite his mother’s 10-year fight to get a second opinion from a different health authority.
Kobe Sutherland, 16, was diagnosed with autism at Yorkhill Children’s Hospital in Glasgow in 2013, aged 12, following a month long assessment by specialists.
In 2015, a Scottish Public Services Ombudsman ruled in favour of an independent psychologist’s assessment which concluded NHS Highland had failed to conduct appropriate assessments on Kobe prior to his diagnosis.
But Kobe’s mother, Sylvia MacKenzie, is now embroiled in a legal case with the health authority in search of a damages settlement to compensate for years of lost support for her son.
And Kobe must now undertake his fourth assessment for autism since the age of two, when he first started exhibiting developmental issues, but Mrs MacKenzie will need to secure up to £8,000 through legal channels to pay for it.
It follows an independent doctor’s assessment done on Kobe in December, carried out on behalf of the solicitors representing NHS Highland, which casts doubt on the opinion formed at Yorkhill.
Mrs MacKenzie, of Walker Crescent in Culloden, said: “I am absolutely gutted with it (the current situation).
“I just think it’s a waste of everyone’s time. Kobe has waited far too long and he is entitled to be compensated for, and if they are going to go back on the Yorkhill diagnosis then that is ridiculous. How many other second opinions and diagnoses at Yorkhill could also be disputed?
“This is my child who is going to be assessed and judged again for the fourth time, and it really hurts me. He just wants to be accepted. But I have to go ahead with this, I can not stop fighting.”
Mrs MacKenzie first reported concerns about her child when he was two, and again when he was four.
Community paediatricians carried out two formal assessments for autism but no diagnosis was given. For the next nine years, Kobe continued to exhibit developmental problems and was in contact with health professionals and social workers.
He regularly failed to attend school and was referred to a children’s reporter on several occasions.
She also claims she was regularly told by health and education professionals that the problem was down to her parenting rather than her son’s condition from about 2011.
Mrs MacKenzie said that an early diagnosis would have spared her son much of the misery he had endured – and given him the support he needed.
A NHS Highland spokeswoman said they could not comment as it is an ongoing legal case.