Transition to Adult Services and The Never-Ending Wait

Hello, everyone 

Finally, after a month of waiting and 2 rescheduled appointments (one because I was unavailable, another because they had forgotten to make note of the appointment in the diary, despite sending me a letter regarding it), I have had a phone call to discuss my transition to adult services because, at age 18, I am now too old to be on the child waiting list for ASD assessment, after being on this list for 16 months. 

I’ll get a letter regarding the transition, my mum will have an appointment to discuss my developmental history at length and, eventually, I will receive appointments to begin the assessment process after all this time.

Due to being with child services for so long, there’s a chance I’ll be placed further up the adult waiting list. However, this will possibly still be a wait of anywhere from a year to 18 months. 

We started this in January 2022, after a false start when I was around 13, in hopes of having the something in place by the time I left for university and the big, wide world beyond that. Now, it’s likely that I’ll be 20 by the time I reach the finish line. 

Has anyone else experienced similar to this, whether it was you individually or someone you know? How do you get through the snail paces of how this system moves, how long the wait is? It’s looking like that I’ll be in this state of inertia, ever waiting, for at least 3 years before I get even close to getting assessed. 

I wish we had done this earlier.