Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello! After 29 years of unexplainable difficulties and eventual burn out, I'm currently going through the assessment process and I'm placed on a waiting list right now. I want to sign up to the job centre to claim job seekers allowance or universal credit but my question is, without the official diagnosis would they still make adjustments for me or allow me to join skills for work programmes? I haven't worked in a long time due to what I thought was some kind of chronic stress problem. I can't face going back to a normal job again without reasonable adjustments being made for my needs and sensory problems :( Does anyone have any advice or experience about benefits, job searching and autism? I'm so worried because the waiting lists can be like 20 months or more and if i need the paperwork and diagnosis before I can get support, I have no idea what to do until then Thank you!!
Well I mean if you just make a list of criterion, that you consider to be characteristics of a job that you find ‘suitable’, they have to honour that..
It’s best to educate you’ve whilst looking for opportunities for healthy-exposure..
And fend off the wolves with criteria for suitable roles, then they’ll push you through all of their schemes eventually, and you can try to find a calling passively, if you have no active goals..
It’s also best not to directly confront work-coaches on any issue, if you want to be stress-free, they only need a whiff of blood in the water and they have a stream of toothless-rhetorical-pseudo-justification to sling at you, so say ‘thank you I’ll take a look, and then defer your rejection of a role until later via email, on the grounds that it’s not suitable’. Do not engage in excusing yourself face-to-face if you want a stress free life, they don’t understand autism, and they’re not interested in why you feel you can’t take a role, they just want you out of their hair.
Yes, that's been my experience too imo over the years sadly. I used to be more confrontational and so on about it whereas I 'keep my head down' more these days generally (a more 'stress-free' type approach)