Published on 12, July, 2020
I’m wondering what people’s thoughts are on the issue of post-diagnostic autism assessment, as a basic standard practice for both adults and children alike, which should be a legal obligation for those tasked with diagnosing autism, in both private and public health settings, in respect of both adults and children with autism - without a post diagnostic assessment, one has no idea what one’s support needs are and therefore there is no way to legally enforce one’s entitlements to have reasonable adjustments put in place, for example in employment - we are totally reliant and dependent on the goodwill of charities to provide the support that we need which should be a legal requirement within a legal framework and as certain basic minimum standards that are legally enforceable - autism experts should be brought in to help design proper support and assessment as well as helping to draft laws that will force society to properly provide for us by properly having support structures in place, the proper implementation of which will be backed up by force of law - current laws are simply not good enough and given the statistics, this situation is even more unacceptable - aside from campaigns for increased funding, campaigns for legislative change should be launched
The NAS do campaign for legislative change. They recently campaigned for changes to the Mental Health Act to include introducing a legal duty for councils to provide enough of the right community services to prevent autistic people from reaching crisis point. If implemented that would have been a good step in the right direction. However the government chose to ignore the campaign
https://community.autism.org.uk/f/adults-on-the-autistic-spectrum/34107/petition-for-wrongful-detention
https://www.autism.org.uk/what-we-do/campaign/mental-health/time-to-act
Worse they promissed to do it then went back on their word.