Not offered assessment for personalised plan

Dear TheCatWoman,

I am sorry that the things I suggested were not helpful. I understand how difficult it can be to find services and I know that some areas have less available.

Thank you for sharing your ideas with me, I have made note of them and will raise it with the community manager. 

If you have any other ideas you can always raise them with the community manager. 

Thank you again,

Olivia Mod 

I looked up all the stuff you suggested and none of it was any help, your ask Ash service wasn't any help as theres nothing in North Wales apart from the group I've already been to who are absolutely useless.

Sorry to sound so negative, but not all of us have services to access or the services themselves are the ones denying any chance of access, mostly because they won't tell you what they do and what services they provide and its like a game of 20 Questions and if you've not asked the right question after 20 goes you lose. It feels like theres some sort of magic formula that will unlock everything only as soon as you get even a sniff of of it it's pulled away.

Something I think would be good, if is users of these services were able to rank them and give some feedback on here, I know one persons experience won't be definitive, but patterns will emerge and it may make the services themselves more responsive to what users or potential users actually need and want because it seems like they live in an echo chamber where they're not listening and continue to provide services that could be made much better.

Dear Aven,

From my understanding NICE guidelines are recommendations for health services rather than direct rules. However, I think that you could raise that a personalised plan may help you access support. . 

I thought I could do some signposting that may be beneficial to take a look at: 

• Autism Services Directory -You can use this tool to find support services in your local area. Please reach out if you need any support with accessing this tool.
• Ask ASH (Autism Support Helper) -This can help you find the right resources on the NAS website
• What can I do if formal support is not offered or is not enough

Best wishes,

Olivia Mod

Perhaps your assessment clinic could give you information about available support? Although support should be offered, it isn’t  always in practice. If you were given a written assessment report detailing your challenges and strengths, it may have included some information which could be considered  ‘support’,

I’ve copied these NICE guidelines from the NAS webpage. 

According to NICE guidelines, a personalised plan should cover: 

• any support that the autistic person and their family and carers need following the diagnosis 
• the most appropriate support in education, employment or housing 
• action to address the triggers of distressed behaviour 
• any additional support for identified co-occurring conditions, for example ADHD or Learning Disability

Your need for a therapist to talk things over would be a common need for many people and that could come under the first bullet point in the NICE guidelines. If your assessment clinic can’t help you, perhaps your GP could refer you to a counsellor who would have knowledge of autism or be autistic themselves.  

Reasonable adjustment in say education could be something like your college allowing you extra time to complete coursework, extra breaks, the loan of software. For reasonable adjustments in employment, you could ask your employer directly for support, e.g., availability of a quiet space, change of lighting, lower background music. It would usually be something that doesn’t cost your employer an ‘unreasonable’ amount of money and would ultimately benefit you both. ‘Reasonable’ is vague — there isn’t an exhaustive list of things.

Following diagnosis, I was given a follow up referral to the NHS Adult Autism Clinic at my local hospital.

The hospital gave me an information pack, a letter stating I had been diagnosed with autism and what this meant regarding my challenges should I wish to claim benefits, a book on DBT for Autism and referral to an online course on autism with the Recovery College. I was also told that I can contact them about my needs in the future if required. I haven’t signed up for the course yet.

From other people’s posts, it sounds like follow up support is not widely available in all areas, so I was fortunate.

I hope you get what you need.

Sounds about right for the UK government; massively inconsistent and with people confidently telling you the wrong info.
Sorry that was your experience  

I've no idea, I've never had one either, I was diagnosed before all the modern diagnostic stuff came out, way back in 2012, I was just told I was autistic, or aspergers as it was then and told that as I'd managed for the previous 50 years, I could keep on managing. There is what calls itself a support group who told me that as I wasn't offered any support at the time I couldn't get any now.

I think it's a postcode lottery as to what you get and it's all down to what your local authority provide, if anything.