• Replies 2 replies
  • Subscribers 79 subscribers
  • Views 1024 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Related
Hints and tips
  • To quote someone's message, first select/highlight the relevant text, and then use the Quote button that appears
  • To "mention" someone, type @ followed by the start of the forum name, and choose from the list; that person will get a notification of being mentioned

When help doesn't really help....

JDW

My counsellor tells me AS is not a mental health issue but in the light of so much ignorance it is hard to navigate through the world when so much of your life is affected. My counsellor is constantly highlighting ways in which AS is affecting my life, at least I know now I am not clumsy through sheer stupidity or that I am weak because I have never been able to master swimming. Yes my handwriting is and always has been terrible but I know why now which helps.

I find institutions set up to help are often the worst culprits as far as lacking in understanding is concerned. I have to see the Camden Society (an organisation set up and contracted to the DWP to help vulnerable adults into work) they often ring up one day and espect me to attend the next despite apparently realising that this is precisely the wrong approach to take with some one with autism. I spent one uncomfortable hour on my first visit with an advisor who spent the entire time trying to force me to look at her. I was very disturbed afterwards and my wife rang them up and read them the riot act and things changed for awhile but she tangles with them again last week for their lack of planning.

  • I have to say in defence of educational establishments that it is very difficult to get this right. There are a wide range of manifestations and people have widely varying expectations of behaviour. There is an acute lack of good information for FE and HE student support - loads of books, but full of platitudes and generalisations. I've written to authors of some of these texts about the limited nature of their apparent knowledge, but such writers are very defensive. One study published a decade ago, widely used for years, was based on ONE student with aspergers who they found difficult to teach

    As someone who has been a disability coordinator in HE alongside teaching, I've been involved with supporting a number of AS students. But it generally amounts to one or two a year. Spread across all subject areas in a university there may be twenty going though a year.There still are not that many AS undergraduates. I do rely on my own insight as someone with manageable AS but am very conscious of great differences between myself and other AS students. I never tell students I'm helping that I've got aspergers myself.

    The trouble is it is still basically something that affects school children. Understanding beyond 18 in many services and organisations is limited to marked traits in clinical writings.

  • I've noticed this sort of thing too. 

    My local college prides itself on having AS/ASD support team. I thought this was great as when I went there in my teens it was horrible, so when I went there as an adult for a part-time course I thought it'd be easy. In my class I kept being excluded from groups by other students so I went to the AS/ASD support team for help - they didn't help as they didn't understand the problem and kept blaming me for other students excluding me, had a go at me for not making enough eye contact with the teacher, kept insisting talking to me face-to-face rather than via email, and forced me to have an in-class support worker (there was no need for this) who talked to me like I was simple-minded as well as made the situation in class worse by highlighting my exclusion. When I complained they again blamed me for the problem, and blamed me for not wanting to accept the in-class support that I didn't need. 

    Colleges, schools, universities, charities, various government agencies, etc. they are all trying to support us, but seriously lack understanding to be able to support us, instead they seem to do more harm than good. I'd hope this changes over time, the more NT's spend time with people who have AS/ASD to understand how we work and how to support us without causing us distress or treating us like we're simple-minded. This takes time, unfortunately.