About The Fife Neurodevelopmental Questionnaire (F-NDQ) - for Service Users

The Fife Neurodevelopmental Questionnaire (F-NDQ) is a tool that allows health professionals to gather a detailed history about all parts of a person’s development. This is important as many people with developmental differences will have strengths and difficulties in more than one area. Equally, most people will experience mental or physical health issues, or go through particularly difficult or stressful events. These experiences are also important in understanding a person. By gathering all this information in once place, the F-NDQ helps clinicians to think about the whole person, what supports might be helpful, whether further assessment in any particular area is required. Currently, the F-NDQ Child Version is used across multiple Scottish NHS Boards, and we are in the process of developing an adult F-NDQ (including both a self-report, and an informant report version)

The copyright to the F-NDQ is owned by NHS Fife, and it was developed by Dr Joshua Muggleton, a Clinical Psychologist with NHS Fife, in collaboration with multiple different health professionals, specialities, and with feedback from service users, staff, and multiple health boards. The F-NDQ was designed for neurodevelopmental assessment pathways, but it is also used in related services, for example Paediatrics, Speech and Language Therapy, Mental Health Services, Psychiatry, and Clinical Psychology, when there are questions about a person’s development and more information is needed.

Until recently, health professionals often looked at one area of development at a time. For example, one team might assess a person for autism, another team assess for ADHD, and another team for Intellectual Disability. However, this isn’t how our brains develop. We know that neurodevelopmental conditions like Autism, ADHD and others often overlap, meaning people with one condition often have traits of another (or even a second diagnosis). Because of this, lots of services are trying to develop a single neurodevelopmental pathway that assesses all aspects of a person’s development at once, rather than having separate pathways each assessing for one specific condition.

The tools that services have used up until recently are all very good at looking at one neurodevelopmental condition, and saying whether or not a person has that condition. However, giving every person a full assessment for every neurodevelopmental condition is time consuming for all involved, will hugely increase the risk false positives (saying you do have a condition when you don’t), and often isn’t needed. Instead, services need a tool that pulls together important information about all parts of a person’s developmental history (their development, medical and social history, and their experiences). This is where the F-NDQ comes in. The F-NDQ can be used to identify which assessments (such as for ADHD) are most likely to be helpful, and what other factors might be contributing to a person’s presentation. It also provides the background information so that, rather than just saying whether or not someone has a neurodevevelopmental condition, you and health professionals can look at the whole person, make sense of any diagnosis and what it means for you or your loved one.

In order to look at so many areas of development, the F-NDQ is a long form, and can take some time to complete. However, there are several reasons why completing the F-NDQ may be a good use of your time

1. The F-NDQ is meant to be a shared developmental history, meaning you shouldn’t have to keep repeating yourself. Service users (especially parents) often say they are frustrated giving the same information to lots of different health professionals. The F-NDQ has been developed in consultation with lots of different health professionals, so is designed to include all the ‘essential’ questions each health professional would want to know, and enough information to allow them to identify if a different type of professional needs to get involved. Health professionals might still have follow up questions, or want to do a more in-depth assessment of a particular area, but it should reduce or stop you having to say the same things over and over.
2. The F-NDQ helps to ensure you or your loved one has a thorough assessment. Health professionals are experts in their small area, but they don’t know everything about all aspects of development, and they don’t know you or your child as well as you do. There is a risk health professionals just ask questions about ‘their area’, and not know how to ask about other important areas, or what to look for. The F-NDQ helps ensure all aspects of development are considered, not just those the professional you’re working with knows best.
3. You should only have to do the F-NDQ once. Health professionals using the F-NDQ are asked to store a scanned copy somewhere on their shared secure digital clinical systems, so other relevant health professionals can access it too, now and in the future. We also strongly recommend you keep your own copy. Health professionals might still have follow up questions, or ask you to update it, but you should only ever have to do it once.
4. The F-NDQ can help you identify what is important, save you time, and help you go into appointments prepared. The process of completing the F-NDQ may help you to think about all aspects of you or your child’s development in detail, potentially in ways you hadn’t thought about before. It can help you identify what is important and describe exactly what is going on, meaning you go into your appointments (with your F-NDQ) feeling confident in what you want to discuss and with examples to hand. Having an F-NDQ to hand means your health professional may be able to focus in more quickly on the bits important to you, as you’ll be giving them lots of written answers to questions they were going to ask.

It is absolutely fine to ask for help to complete the F-NDQ!

We encourage parents to complete the F-NDQ with a partner/co-parent, grandparents, or a friend, so you can share the writing and discuss your answers. If a health professional has given you the F-NDQ to complete, you can ask them for help if you need it. They may be able to help you themselves, or have colleagues who are able to help you. In addition, people have been able to access support to complete the F-NDQ from schools, social services, charities, and other local groups.