OUR TEAM
OUR TEAM
The London Autism Assessment Practice (LAAP) provides a comprehensive diagnostic assessment and advice service for children and young people with or without autism.
LAAP offers a multi-disciplinary approach delivering assessments and reviews for children or young people with or without a diagnosis of autism, complemented with bespoke educational and therapeutic advice. We achieve this by combining educational, speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and psychology perspectives as part of our evaluations.
VIVIENNE CLIFFORD
Director
Vivienne is a qualified Educational Psychologist who is also trained in ADOS-2. Vivienne previously worked at senior level within a local authority psychology service and also held a role as Professional Tutor and Honorary Lecturer at University College London, teaching and supervising Educational Psychologists in training. Vivienne has an established private practice working for many years as an independent educational psychologist.
Vivienne’s work involves completing assessments of children and young people with special educational needs. She has acted as consultant educational psychologist to a number of local authority schools (working with them to provide assistance with school development and drawing up and evaluating intervention programmes for children). She has also held practising privileges linked to The Portland Hospital and The Harley Street Children’s Hospital. Vivienne also works as an Expert Witness including for Special Educational Needs Tribunals.
Vivienne has contributed to conferences on a national basis, providing keynote speeches and seminars and has led practice on working with young people to the age of 25 years. Much of her case work has involved autism spectrum disorder.
Vivienne is a director of the London Autism Assessment Practice.
JUANITA HURLEY
Director
Juanita is a qualified Speech and Language Therapist who also holds a Diploma in Autism and is trained in ADOS-2. Juanita’s experience reflects a number of varied roles including working at senior levels and as Head of Services, for portage home visiting service, as a consultant speech and language therapist being directly employed by schools and providing advice to professional bodies.
Juanita currently undertakes assessment and diagnostic work within her independent practice and this includes Expert Witness work including representation at Special Educational Needs Tribunals. She manages and delivers services to a London school having a broad ranging caseload of students who present with disorders of communication such as SCLN, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Language Disorder and ASD amongst others.
Juanita is a director of the London Autism Assessment Practice.
Julia Avnon
Child and Adolescent Psychologist
Julia is a Child and Adolescent Psychologist with twenty years of experience working with children and young people with a variety of psychological, neurological and neurodevelopmental conditions, including ASD, ADHD, complex epilepsy, learning disability and neuro-disability.
Within the NHS, she has worked in specialist, multi-disciplinary assessment and intervention teams at Great Ormond Street Hospital, University College of London Hosital and St. George’s NHS Trust neuro-disability team. Julia is a Clinical Tutor at Anna Freud Centre and an Honorary Lecturer at the University College of London, where she is part of a team training the NHS workforce working in the field of autism and learning disability.
Julia is also involved in research in neurodiversity as a Clinical Fellow for the Group for Research in Relationships and Neurodiversity.
DR MIKE HYMANS
Chartered Psychologist
Dr Mike Hymans has 39 years’ experience as a psychologist, latterly as Principal Educational Psychologist in a local authority Children’s Services Department. He has taught in schools and pupil referral units and is an ex-governor, with specialist responsibility for an ARP and safeguarding, at a secondary school. He has facilitated a fathers’ group of children with special educational needs for 13 years.
He has written various publications and papers such as, the prediction of delinquency; De-constructing children’s behaviour; Think before you act; Delivering a Faith-Based Fathers’ Group Intervention; Multi-agency working; Giving Psychology Away; Think before you act; creating a dynamic classroom; whole school strategies for anger management; motivation and learning; and coaching and mentoring in schools – a practice manual and, has a chapter on working as an expert witness in the courts, soon to be published, as part of his role on the BPS Expert Witness Advisory Group.
CAROLINE MUNDY
Speech and Language Therapy Assistant
Caroline worked as a Special Educational Needs Teaching Assistant in schools for 15 years. During this time, she worked 1:1 with a range of children with Autism and children with SEN, differentiating their learning, supporting language and social development, and developing strategies to manage challenging behaviour both inside and outside the classroom. Within schools she has run social skills and mental wellbeing groups.
Caroline has worked extensively with school SENCO’s, external agencies and parents and also supports children with SEN and their families within their home environment, providing educational support, behaviour management techniques and high-quality visual resources. Caroline has undertaken extensive training over the last 15 years working in education, including most recently ADI-R training, SCERTS training, Social Thinking training and Cache Level 2 Understanding Children and Young People’s Mental Health. She also holds a Level 3 Diploma in Child Psychology.
Caroline now works as the Speech and Language Therapy Assistant at The London Autism Assessment Practice, under the direction of the LAAP Practitioners and supervised by Juanita Hurley, Specialist Speech and Language Therapist. Caroline’s role includes carrying out observations of our clients in schools or a home setting and writing detailed reports.
Anele Greissel
Occupational Therapist
Anele Griessel qualified as an Occupational Therapist in 1996 and has more than 20 years of experience working as an occupational therapist in a variety of settings and services including NHS community children’s services and independent specialist schools. She completed the Sensory Integration Post Graduate training to Level 4 and is an Advanced Practitioner in Sensory Integration. She completed a Postgraduate Certificate in Developmental Disorders in 2013 and is currently undertaking an MSc degree.
Anele is qualified to administer specialist assessments such as the Assessment of Motor and Process Skills and the Sensory Integration and Praxis Tests. Anele is a certified provider of specialist interventions such as Interactive Metronome, Sensory, Oral and Sequential Feeding programs, Integrated Listening Systems, and Therapeutic Listening programs.
Anele has been preparing independent occupational therapy assessments for SENDIST Tribunals since 2005 and is the founder of TLC Space, an independent occupational therapy practice in Grayshott, Surrey.
