How do you work out what ADHD support you actually need?
Last updated June 2026.
Start from what you already have, not from what's wrong with you. Map your existing support across the areas of life ADHD actually touches, find the biggest gap and fill that one first, beginning with free routes. Your Support Map does exactly this in about ten minutes, free, no email required.
Why is "get support" such useless advice?
Because it never says which support. ADHD advice collapses into two words, medication and diagnosis, as if support were one thing you either have or don't. Meanwhile the reality of an unsupported ADHD life leaks from seven directions at once: health, money, home, work, relationships, emotional load and structure. The person drowning in late fees has a different gap from the person who can't start work without a deadline, and both get told the same thing: get assessed.
And the assessment route, real as its value is, now runs to years of waiting in much of the UK. The independent ADHD Taskforce said it plainly in its final report: support should be needs-led and should not require a clinical diagnosis. Working out your needs is therefore the actual first step, and almost nothing exists to help you do it.
What is a support map?
A picture of the support you currently have, drawn area by area. Your Support Map asks you to respond to 21 statements across seven areas of life, then draws your answers as a spider chart: the fuller the shape, the more supported you are. The dips show where the right support would change the most.
Two design choices matter here. First, it measures support, not symptoms. It is deliberately not a diagnosis quiz, there are enough of those, and it never plays at being one. It works the same whether you're diagnosed, waiting or just suspect. Second, the dips are not a judgement. A low score in an area means you're carrying that area alone right now. Carrying it alone is a circumstance, and circumstances can change.
The seven areas come from the validated instruments researchers use to measure how ADHD affects daily functioning, so the map is asking the questions the clinical literature asks, pointed at support rather than severity.
Why does it lead with free options?
Because ADHD is expensive, and the supports that help most are often the ones money buys. Late fees, impulse buys and lost paperwork already cost ADHD households thousands a year, the ADHD tax, and then coaching, apps and private assessments present their invoices on top. That is the quiet unfairness of it.
So every area of the report leads with free and community routes, helplines, charities, peer groups, benefits checks, and treats paid support as one option rather than the plan. The money section starts with what you may already be owed: Turn2us reports that people who check for unclaimed benefits find around £5,000 a year on average. Filling a support gap sometimes starts with a ten-minute entitlement check, not a purchase.
What do you do with the result?
Fill the biggest dip first, with one step, and ignore the other six areas for now. A map showing four gaps is not a to-do list of four projects. It's a prioritisation: this is the area where new support changes the most, so this is where one small action goes.
If the deepest dip is work, the next steps are well-mapped: our guide to reasonable adjustments for ADHD covers what to ask for and how, Access to Work can fund support with no diagnosis, and a tool like Koala can carry the daily planning load. If it's money, the free debt and benefits routes in your report come first. One area, one step, then live your life and come back.
You can email the map to yourself or save it as a PDF, but only if you choose to. Your answers stay on the page otherwise.
FAQ
Is Your Support Map a diagnostic test for ADHD? No, deliberately. It measures the support you have, not your symptoms, so it never plays at diagnosis. It's useful whether you're diagnosed, on a waiting list or exploring.
Do I need an ADHD diagnosis to use it? No. It's built for ADHD brains, diagnosed or not, which matches both how Access to Work operates and the ADHD Taskforce's needs-led principle: support starts when the need shows up, not when the paperwork does.
What happens to my answers? They stay on the page unless you choose to email your map to yourself. There's no email gate and no account.
How long does it take? About ten minutes: 21 statements, then your map and a report signposting support area by area, free routes first. It's at support-map.koalaforwork.com.