I’m confused now! This has been recommended to me, but struggling to find any feed back. Or am I over thinking it and all assessment centres are the same?
It's probably because not many people on the forum at the moment are aware of them. I'd never heard of them until your post. I'll do the best I can... bearing in mind I can only point you to what's out there - so some of it might not be autism-specific.
There is a review website "I want great care" which has reviews for psychiatry uk
I'm fortunate enough to hold down a job with a fairly large company. The contract with our occupational health provider didn't cover an assessment - and I had a really bad experience when they "supported" me in a previous depressive episode. In my opinion, had they made the effort to have a conversation with me instead of putting me through one of their tick-box when-can-we-get-him-back-to-work tests they would have picked up that something wasn't right and the wheels would have been turning a lot earlier.
Being as I've been employed for a while, and I was in a pretty unhappy place, I had a very supportive manager who chose to fight my corner and I also had an excellent relationship with the head of department who also controls procurement (getting stuff from somewhere else if we don't have it in-house) so my assessment was paid for.
I went private and tracked down a local company and had my assessment face to face in-between lockdowns (made sure they were accredited). DIdn't know anything about them. My manager had the initial conversation and gave me the green-light that she was happy to work with them and after I'd spoken with one of the psychologists I was comfortable that they were the team for me.
