Location: Exeter
Reporting to: Autism Service Team Manager

About Paloma
In 2024, our founders, Mark and Darshak, were shocked to find that children needing an NHS autism or ADHD assessment were waiting 4-10 years for these assessments. Delayed assessments result in children being more likely to develop mental health conditions and fall behind in education. Furthermore, the much-needed pre/post-assessment support (outside of ADHD medications) is typically not funded by the NHS. These long waits have built up due to increased recognition and understanding of neurodevelopmental conditions and a lack of investment and innovation within the NHS to meet the growing demand. Mark and Darshak, with their 25 years of combined NHS experience, including building services that have treated over 1,000,000 patients in obesity & ophthalmology, founded Paloma to change this. Our mission is to make NHS autism and ADHD assessments and care accessible within 4 weeks of a GP referral, and, in turn, help every child achieve their potential.

As of May 2026, we have successfully reduced waits to 3 months by:

• Taking a product-first approach to redesign the care pathway to give families a more consumer-like experience of care
• Our in-house product, engineering and AI team building our own autism and ADHD specific electronic patient record and AI documentation tool to free clinicians from their significant documentation burden to re-focus on supporting families
• Investing in expanding the clinician workforce and upskilling them in new ways of working.

The Opportunity
Paloma Health has developed a new gold-standard autism assessment pathway and our own Patient Record software system, which allows us to offer:

• An exceptional service and timely assessments, as well as clear strengths and needs-based outcomes, regardless of whether an autism diagnosis is made.
• High assessor role satisfaction by improving the experience of delivering assessments. For example, we are building an AI tool to streamline diagnostic report writing, which we know is a pressure of the role.

You will work as a member of a multidisciplinary assessment team, delivering:

• In-person child observations at our Exeter clinic
• Peer MDT diagnostic decision-making, with the support of the senior clinical MDT where required

About you
You are a registered nurse, speech and language therapist, occupational therapist, social worker or practitioner psychologist skilled in ADOS assessments. You want to be part of an always-learning environment that embraces software and AI tools, and you will help us go further and faster with your positive and collaborative attitude.

Responsibilities

• Conduct high-quality child observations as part of an autism assessment.
• Act in accordance with our Safeguarding Policy, including conducting a risk assessment where necessary.
• Keep up to date with mandatory training and your professional qualification requirements, including CPD.

Qualifications and experience
Required:

• NMC-registered Nurse, HCPC Registered Speech and Language Therapist, Occupational Therapist, Arts Therapist, or Practitioner Psychologist, or Social Work England Registered Social Worker.
• Completion of a recognised ADOS-2 course is required (Clinical Psychologists considered without).
• At least 1 year of experience delivering children’s observations within an autism assessment process.
• Good time management skills, including caseload management.
• High-quality parent and patient communication skills.
• Enhanced DBS with barred list check.

Why join Paloma?

• Total compensation of £68,000 to £72,000 per year (depending on registration).
• 37 days of annual leave.
• 5% employer pension contribution.
• Equity compensation through Share Options (for 0.8 FTE+).
• Professional Registration Fees Allowance.
• NHS discounts including Blue Light Card.

Paloma Health is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace and throughout the application process.