The first month after a diagnosis: what to do

A diagnosis, formal or still-forming, usually arrives with more relief than clarity about what to do next. The order that helps most families: start therapy before the paperwork, not after — early intervention matters more than any certificate, and none of the schemes on this site require you to wait for one.

In parallel, apply for the UDID — it's the single document nearly everything else checks for, and it takes 30 to 90 days to come through, so starting it early matters. While it's pending, show your written diagnostic report to your child's school directly; schools are legally required to accommodate regardless of whether the UDID has arrived yet, and a written report makes that conversation concrete rather than abstract.

This is also the moment to find people who've been through it. A phone call to a parent-helpline routing service, or simply showing up at a therapy centre's waiting room, connects you to condition-specific parent networks faster than searching online ever will — most of that support is genuinely word-of-mouth, not something with a public directory.