Can you contact the National Autistic Society for help with employers?

Hi,

Essentially I have been working from home for about 3 years now, I was working in the office before Covid but was having meltdowns basically every week / other week so was starting to request working from home already, and working from home has entirely stopped the meltdowns in work and thus proven a far better way of working for me. My company has constantly been asking about me going back in though, and recently a change of upper management occurred and they are determined to have everybody back in regardless of reasons. I had an assessment via work with an independent company where they wrote a report basically saying I  can work from home perfectly well so its better for me to stay working from home, but if I absolutely had to go back in they should make some adjustments. 

My employer however has taken this as I should definitely return to work and they'll make a couple of the adjustments, with the reasoning being essentially "better collaboration" and to be there in person to help new employees using my years of experience. Now as the bits of adjustment they would be willing to partially cover are noise cancelling headphones and being in a quiet corner of the office, this is entirely contradictory anyway. Not to mention it doesn't help other reasons I find the office stressful, and wearing noise cancelling headphones all day sounds like it be very physically irritating in and of itself.

I'm also not happy as during the discussion, and many times previously it has been suggested that if I want to apply to higher grades I'll need to come into the office, even though the one I'm aiming to apply for that is coming up soon is a job that was done from home for 2 years, and is currently still gone 2 days a week from home so is entirely possible to be done not in the office. They also said "I have kids and would like to work from home", I can't remember their exact wording after that, but essentially boiled down to, we can't always get what we want, as well as comparing having kids to having a disability, as if I could pay somebody to be autistic for me while I'm at work.

At this point I'm trying to get more expert, or at least experienced official opinions to take to them to try and sort it out, as even the thought of being forced to go back into that environment made me have a meltdown, and based on the discussion it honestly seems like they don't really count Autism as a disability at all and just think maybe in the last few years suddenly I'll be fine with it now.

Any other help from people who have had similar experiences would also be appreciated. At this point I'm not even sure if legally I can make them allow me to work from home, but I do know if they are intent on forcing me and I can't stop them I will instead be looking for another job that does as I really don't want to go back to weekly meltdowns with people who have no clue about how to handle it, such as when I'm not verbal taking me into a room and asking lots of questions.

Parents
  • The law in the UK means that employers have to consider reasonable adjustments. Note the word consider. My experience has not been great tbh. Get your union to help if you have one. The final recourse is an employment tribunal.

Reply
  • The law in the UK means that employers have to consider reasonable adjustments. Note the word consider. My experience has not been great tbh. Get your union to help if you have one. The final recourse is an employment tribunal.

Children
  • I've joined 1 yesterday basically for this reason, sadly it seems autism really isn't viewed as a real disability by a lot of work places, as unless you are severely autistic they think just having meltdowns is "a bit of stress" or something.