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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.

Parents

  • 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.

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  • 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.

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