Adult Aspergers, why the focus only on those with learning disabilities

I don't believe HFA have less needs than LFA.

For LFA the needs are geared toward care, but they could be missing out on the specific addressing of autism.

To provide for people with autism you have to undersand the condition. With LFA there is a focus on care, behaviour etc. but are the carers really understanding autism?

For HFA, many do not have jobs at all and suffer unbearable levels of stress and anxiety, loneliness, maybe bullying and domestic abuse by so-called family because they have no way out, poverty. All of this leads to a miserable life blighted by mental health issues. But the support services do not understand the nature of autism and so cannot provide the support needed.

I am sure there are some psychologists, mental health teams, local groups etc. which are good, but too many think that the person has a learning disability and that that is the most important thing.

In essence the reasonable adjustments needed to deal with an autisitic person are required in the behaviour of the support staff/professionals, and in their understanding of the nature of autism. This is something they have not had to do before. For someone in a wheelchair you provide an adapted environment, for a deaf person you provide a BSL interpreter, but for someone with autism the support staff have to understand what autism is and alter their behaviour and they just don't seem to get this at all.

Lots of HFA cannot operate in the world as it is at all. There is just no-one out there to help or give support. I have almost given up.

The other side of the coin lies with attitudes within the autism community, copied by health professionals.

If you've got a job you cannot have autism (so does it mean anything at all to claim only 15% of people with autism are in full time employment?).

And in much the same way if you don't have a learning disability you don't have autism.

So you ignore all the able people on the spectrum insisting they are irrelevant even when (perish the thought) scientists might learn something observing how the able group copes in the world.

And where is NAS on this ? - sides with the "if you are in a job you cannot have autism" camp for the most part

So those of us managing have never suffered....apparently.

The problem lies deep - with the Leading Rewarding and Fulfilling Lives initiative. The idea was to have separate participation boards and commissioning officers for autism in all local authorities.

However the policy gave a let out clause. Autism could be addressed by a mental health or a learning disability partnership board, in principle provided that autism was addressed separately by those boards.

The problem is that Local Government only does what it is required to do, not what it is recommended to do, and Central Government wont interfere in what they call local democracy matters. The situation is not helped by the cut backs incurred in economic recession.

So little real progress has been made, and I don't feel NAS has been outspoken enough about it.

What tends to happen is that autism is covered by a learning disability partnership board, but the members of a participation board representing people with autism also have to have a learning disability. You cannot attend one if you haven't also got a learning disability.

And most councils have a nominal commissioning officer for autism who is usually also the commissioning officer for learning disability (or mental health in some councils) and usually knows and cares little about autism.

These boards decide what provisions are made by social services and also influence and work hand in hand with the local health authority.

As long as the Autism Act and Living Rewarding and Fulfilling Lives fails to enforce a distinction between autism and learning disability, nothing is going to change.

NAS18906 said:

LFA sufferers have greater needs than HFA people. Some of the division in attention is because the resources go those in greatest need.

There are lots of TV characters on TV with Aspergers/HFA - Doc Martin is a prime example. Many TV detectives also have many of the traits.

LFA sufferers have greater needs than HFA people. Some of the division in attention is because the resources go those in greatest need.

I was lucky to have a more suitable job (albeit fixed-term) to go to at the time, so resigned (having reached the point of throwing up pure acid in the street – I think I'd have got an ulcer and/or breakdown if I'd stayed). But it was the first secure job I'd ever had: though it wasn't right for me, i'd jumped at it and taken it when I shouldn't, out of necessity. The line manager told me I came across as bossy, laughed too loud, and "needed training in self-awareness". I went for CBT counselling because of the anxiety I was suffering. (Didn't help that my mother was terminally ill at the time, either.) I wasn't the first or last of her casualties: my successor didn't survive the probationary period, either. But she's been in post for years, while there's a rapid turnover of subordinates.

There is, unfortunately, a tendency to assume that highly intelligent people "will be OK" regardless of other difficulties. I had some unhappy experiences of this kind of thing at school. While my Asperger's wasn't on anyone's radar (this was in the late '70s), I was a victim of bullying for many years, but the schools did not take it as seriously as they should have done, because I was a high achiever academically.

In adulthood, I suppose they think that, having made it thus far, often without a diagnosis, help isn't needed. Having had to resign from a job because it and the manager drove me close to a breakdown, I can safely say this isn't true.