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Adult referral

RidleyRumpus

Hi,

I had not considered myself to be on the spectrum but comments from my ex wife and several colleagues in the teaching profession that they thought I maybe got me thinking.

I have many of the same characteristics of those on the spectrum and when I have taken the online tests as honestly as possible the indication is always that I am on the spectrum.

The problem is that I think AS may account for why I seem to have so many interpersonal problems at work, I am a physics teacher). I am often accused of being rude when I just cannot see it, I really do not want to be.

This is made worse that I have great deal of difficulty with names and faces, it took me four years to be able to differentiate all the colleagues in my department and there are only ten. With pupils it is plain embarrassing to be talking to a pupil in the corridor not know their name and be told I have taught them for X years...

As a consequence it is not surprising to me that I have more than my fair share of complaints from students and parents. Unfortunately due to at least partle due to these problems my school is now moving to have me sacked.

So today I went to my GP and asked to be referred for a test only to be told that this PCG does not fund/provide referrals for adults. I have checked for a private referral and this would cost me £1000 which I just do not have.

I presume that they are not allowed to do this?

Parents

  • Hi RidleyRumpus,

    That sounds all rather familiar, chemistry here and research rather than teaching but without a job even that little difference is gone now...

    It's rubbish what you have been told but it seems a very common response. What they should do according to NICE guidelines is to have you fill in that AQ10 questionnaire and if you are above a certain threshold there they should recommend you to be assessed. Then a board will have to decide whether the assessment gets funded.

    I got precisely the same comment, it turned out the GP who said it (and even said that it is well possible that I've got AS) does actually sit on this board...

    On some autism websites they recommend to take a printout of those guidelines to your GP but on the website of our local NAS branch they have a whole page about this problem and they ask people to report to them if they have an experience like yours. They said they will contact them to explain that they are wrong and what they should be doing and asked me to see the GP again and ask for it again. I saw a different GP the second time (in the same practice), so I'm not entirely sure if it was because of the NAS contacting the practice but suddenly I did get referred.

    Maybe contact your NAS branch about it and ask them for help, I think that will make it easier than going to the GP with lots of literature, they may have a bit more weight.

    Have a good thought though of what use that label will be to you. You may have an explanation for the problems then but it confirms you are probably not going to be able to change enough regardless how hard you try and you won't get any help really. And it's not helping you with finding a job. Obviously you don't need to tell anyone but you may find out that you are actually a lot less "normal" than you thought. After losing a job your self-confidence probably has suffered quite a lot already anyway - maybe we don't compare quite so well here, but this diagnosis did shake the last bit of it out of me. But then I wanted to be told that perhaps I'm not completely average in some areas but not so far off that it could be called a condition, so perhaps if you want a diagnosis to explain things to yourself then you will feel different about it.

    Good luck anyway, both with that assessment stuff and with getting a new job!

Reply

  • Hi RidleyRumpus,

    That sounds all rather familiar, chemistry here and research rather than teaching but without a job even that little difference is gone now...

    It's rubbish what you have been told but it seems a very common response. What they should do according to NICE guidelines is to have you fill in that AQ10 questionnaire and if you are above a certain threshold there they should recommend you to be assessed. Then a board will have to decide whether the assessment gets funded.

    I got precisely the same comment, it turned out the GP who said it (and even said that it is well possible that I've got AS) does actually sit on this board...

    On some autism websites they recommend to take a printout of those guidelines to your GP but on the website of our local NAS branch they have a whole page about this problem and they ask people to report to them if they have an experience like yours. They said they will contact them to explain that they are wrong and what they should be doing and asked me to see the GP again and ask for it again. I saw a different GP the second time (in the same practice), so I'm not entirely sure if it was because of the NAS contacting the practice but suddenly I did get referred.

    Maybe contact your NAS branch about it and ask them for help, I think that will make it easier than going to the GP with lots of literature, they may have a bit more weight.

    Have a good thought though of what use that label will be to you. You may have an explanation for the problems then but it confirms you are probably not going to be able to change enough regardless how hard you try and you won't get any help really. And it's not helping you with finding a job. Obviously you don't need to tell anyone but you may find out that you are actually a lot less "normal" than you thought. After losing a job your self-confidence probably has suffered quite a lot already anyway - maybe we don't compare quite so well here, but this diagnosis did shake the last bit of it out of me. But then I wanted to be told that perhaps I'm not completely average in some areas but not so far off that it could be called a condition, so perhaps if you want a diagnosis to explain things to yourself then you will feel different about it.

    Good luck anyway, both with that assessment stuff and with getting a new job!

Children
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