BBC In Depth: the ongoing battle to define autism

It’s very interesting reading, my view is how the first point of contact happens needs to change. The GP has total autonomy, how you are treated is based on their personal views of autism or ADHD not medical science.

Maybe regular courses on understanding autism and best practice would help, unfortunately people have their personal views, but these shouldn’t come into the workplace.

An older GP is likely to have less understanding of autism or ADHD, some refuse to even acknowledge it exists.

If I went to a GP and told them I had a severe headache, I would expect an answer of “no you haven’t.”  I have several family members who work in the NHS,  one is very high up in adult safeguarding, their views totally invalidate “ all this so called autism and ADHD”.

i do wonder if some of the private providers are giving value for money, maybe a cap should be introduced on assessments. For them it is purely business, a gap in the market is identified and the expected profit is calculated. These companies seem to appear, diesel emissions, mis-sold finance and so on. Maybe tightening up on qualifications would help give better care. 
The ombudsman’s report is common sense, the whole service is still too much of a postcode lottery.

Also whilst I’m ‘standing on my soap box’, the only having ‘Right to Choose’ in England needs to stop, it should cover the whole of the UK.

It’s very interesting reading, my view is how the first point of contact happens needs to change. The GP has total autonomy, how you are treated is based on their personal views of autism or ADHD not medical science.

Maybe regular courses on understanding autism and best practice would help, unfortunately people have their personal views, but these shouldn’t come into the workplace.

An older GP is likely to have less understanding of autism or ADHD, some refuse to even acknowledge it exists.

If I went to a GP and told them I had a severe headache, I would expect an answer of “no you haven’t.”  I have several family members who work in the NHS,  one is very high up in adult safeguarding, their views totally invalidate “ all this so called autism and ADHD”.

i do wonder if some of the private providers are giving value for money, maybe a cap should be introduced on assessments. For them it is purely business, a gap in the market is identified and the expected profit is calculated. These companies seem to appear, diesel emissions, mis-sold finance and so on. Maybe tightening up on qualifications would help give better care. 
The ombudsman’s report is common sense, the whole service is still too much of a postcode lottery.

Also whilst I’m ‘standing on my soap box’, the only having ‘Right to Choose’ in England needs to stop, it should cover the whole of the UK.

Roy said:

Also whilst I’m ‘standing on my soap box’, the only having ‘Right to Choose’ in England needs to stop, it should cover the whole of the UK.

I do agree. In my area, NHS adult ADHD assessments have stopped because there aren’t qualified clinicians. 

My thinking was to have more than one person involved in the initial process, too many patients are dismissed because they talk too well or seem to cope.  A diagnosis is a long process yet someone can be dismissed at the whim of one GP. A discussion with people trained in mental health would be a good idea.

I've seen so many posts where someone can’t get access to an adult  autism assessment because their postcode has no facilities or funding, that can’t be right. 
I can imagine some GP,s do  steer people away from Right to choose as it does come out of their budget

My NHS assessment was a whole day with two specialists present. It wasn’t a large unit, they can obviously assess 5 patients per week, that’s a trained autism specialist, a speech therapist and a senior psychiatrist. to keep up with the current workload they would need to have a massive expansion of facilities, I waited for 3 years for my appointment.

My wife is a District Nurse, every job she sees  advertised is open only to existing NHS staff, she has just moved from one trust to another, her old job is still vacant, more people retire or leave, it just creates more job vacancies as they are basically just moving the same staff around so the budget doesn’t increase.

Do you think it would be better or worse if they had a separate starting point for physical and mental health? So you make an appointment at the GP for physical ailments, but someone else for the head stuff. 

In an ideal world then, this other standard MH appointment would be 20 minutes+ at least, as it's often hard to have a difficult conversation and open up when you are so time pushed, and they'd have more staff to deal with it. 

Obviously even though it should help GPs, there would never be funding, but I do think all the private care they have to use, does use up budget, and if they actually funded the NHS and had more people trained in mental health, the country would be better off for it. (And stop the guessing game for people having to choose their own provider and balance wait lists of each company Vs reputation for care/after care). I know it's a bit of dream that everyone gets equal care.

One problem though is I know they aren't entirely separate issues, and mental health can have physical symptoms, so don't know if it would be better or worse, but good to consider what a functional system might look like and not just a patched up one!

Oh and thanks for the article links phased, I do agree with you and saw they even link the split in the spectrum article right in the middle of the one about funding. And not once does the article actually talk about people, only the buzz words to get the audience to think negatively about assessments without seeing the positive affirmation they can bring.