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Benefits

NAS69281

Hi there, 

Just like between 16% and 22% of autistic adults I'm long term unemployed. I'm on universal credit and have to go into the job centre once every two weeks to prove I'm looking for work etc. I live rent free with my mum but she is past retirement age and still working full time because she simply cannot afford to retire or even reduce her hours with me still living at home.

I can't understand what the other people who fall into this category live on? There's obviously a vast number of perfectly capable autistic adults who are also out of work long term. Are they all on universal credit too? We all know that's not enough to live on. Is there anyone else in a similar situation? 

I can't spend the rest of my life going into the job centre every couple of weeks to report that once again I've had no luck getting a job. It's costing the tax payer, it's driving my mum into the ground, and I'm severely depressed because of it. 

I've heard of people getting a late diagnosis (in their twenties) and all of a sudden they were housed and had benefits thrown at them. I just can't understand why there are some people who are given housing etc and others who are given nothing at all. Of course I understand there are people on the more severe end of the spectrum who require assisted living. 

I have absolutely no one to ask about these things as since my diagnosis, like most others, there's been radio silence. Absolutely nothing at all from anyone. I thought a diagnosis would mean access to more support but it's left me even more lost and confused than before!

Parents

  • I am one of those diagnosed in the 20s and. Yes I am currently on universal credit & was given support to move out of an extremely toxic environment home environment where I was living in a damp and cold static caravan. using near to all my universal credit at the time paying for both my working parents, My sister, her daughter and partners electric usage, internet and water, council tax and coal to keep the house warm even though I could use the living room in the house. The only access I had in the house was to the kitchen and bathroom. I was also contributing the last of my income to family shop which only p[provided me few hot meals a week and breakfast. the rest of the week I would have to survive on just plain pasta. 

    I had to move because my family where making me ill & kept sabotaging me into working in environments that near crippled me. It took until age 24 to get the support and i am grateful. I do have to admit It, I have got it easy at the moment because my universal credit is paying my rent and is giving me enough to pay bills and support myself. I know i am extremely lucky to have four hours of support a week to help me with deal with doctors and access the community (Like clubs and Gym) . I am also lucky that i had the support and encouragement because my support worker got me into college to study my GCSE in English and Maths which is free to all adults if they do not possess a C or equivalent which will hopefully let me access the access to technology course next year.

    The support is out their but you have to put the effort into arranging it. For me it started with a needs assessment which was i had to call up and arrange with the help of the safeguarding lead at my local job centre.  

  • in reply to Blue

    I'm so glad things eventually worked out for you Moon. I'm in a similar situation to yourself. But it didn't come easily. I had to jump through many hoops, and provide a lot of factual evidence to support my claims. That's how it should be. I'm not complaining about that. I've been paying into the system for thirty years, and so I have no shame or guilt in receiving welfare payments that have been legally awarded to me after many and rigorous assessments.  

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  • in reply to Blue

    I'm so glad things eventually worked out for you Moon. I'm in a similar situation to yourself. But it didn't come easily. I had to jump through many hoops, and provide a lot of factual evidence to support my claims. That's how it should be. I'm not complaining about that. I've been paying into the system for thirty years, and so I have no shame or guilt in receiving welfare payments that have been legally awarded to me after many and rigorous assessments.  

Children
  • in reply to Blue

    Blue, I've been through that cycle. It started when took my very first job when I was 15 (selling and delivering dairy produce on a pushbike).  Since then, I've had 11 jobs (it could be 12 actually). One of them lasted just under ten years and another just under three. The rest lasted no more than a few weeks or months. All of them ended badly. Things only changed once I'd reached a point of no return mentally and physically and I had accumulated overwhelming medical evidence to present in a Capability Assessment. I had support from a local charity with every step of the process. It's not the life I had imagined way back when I was 15, but compared to the daily exhaustion, long periods of depression, six-monthly nervous breakdowns, weekly panic attacks and constant thoughts about suicide, this is a much better existence than I've had up to now.

  • in reply to Blue

    The whole system is punitive, the idea that the poor have only themselves to blame for their predicament. It comes from Bentham, from Elizabeth's times, though research, possibly counterintuitively, more often indicates that poverty itself is what may drive poor decidion making, idleness, turno g to drink and drugs etc

    When I graduated there was sky high unemployment among graduates for the first time, experiencing hostility for not having a job was like having acid thrown into your face.

    It wasn't entirely anger and other deep dark emotions I couldn't deal with the time, I did fear bullying as I had been at school too. But I worked voluntarily in an alternative bookshop instead, lived there, and experienced the joys and delights of being bullied there instead: being humiliated in front of customers and constantly named and shamed in the day book. Super!

    Better to become truly self employed if at al possible and learn at least certain kinds of assertiveness skills if you can.

    Just so glad I got out of the UK when I did. 

  • in reply to ☕Tassimo ☕

    I am only 25 and I have realised that I'm not the problem, the labour market is the problem. Employers are getting with so much abuse in the workplace, I just realised they actively seem to encourage it.

    You can keep your head down and get on with the job/task and you'll still be in the firing line either because your keeping out of the drama which get you noticed or getting on with job and accidently showing someone up that been in the job for years who want you gone because your making them look bad.

    Since age 18 I have been going through that destructive cycle of employment to unemployment. I've had over 20+ jobs and haven't managed to stay at any of them for very long. about a half of the jobs I've quit due to bullying and about half of those ended up with me coming to seriously and purposely inflicted harm from the other members of staff. The other job did not last because they where either zero hours and temporary. I've been through every pointless work programme and none of them work to find suitable employment. They keep trying to force me into employment situations that neuro typical are refusing to do because they think I'm an easy target at the job centre, my support workers have stopped the job centre and the shawtrust for trying to dump me back on a livestock farm or working in meat production.

    break the cycle. i know its easy said then done. Ask for help. their are organisations out their but you have to find them. Highly recommend avoiding the shawtrust their health and work programme is joke and they are extremely abusive. From experience the smaller organisations that are locally based are more productive and hands on. 

    If anyone needs help highly recommend looking for your local Integrated Housing and Community Support Service county in England should have a similar organisation operating within their borders