Oyez, oyez! Calling all "high functioners"!

Time and again, this all points to the need for post-diagnostic assessments following diagnosis to correctly and in a systematic way assess level of autism following the issue of diagnosis report, especially in the case of online diagnosis and for those diagnosed later in life, also to properly identify appropriate supports that may be required going forward, taking into account latest research from overseas on autism. those in charge are clearly not prepared to properly fund these efforts and even my own diagnosis in 2021, carried out online during Covid (used as an easy excuse for everything), was outsourced to a private body via the NHS, where too many assumptions about health, disability, mental health and hidden disabilities are being made, which is leading to all manner of stereotypes, myths and prejudiced attitudes, which having been diagnosed later in life myself, I was shocked to see the lack of support out there and even where the general public do not even have the basic information about autism and hidden disabilities, which along with mental health in general is not even considered “real” and is the poor relation when it comes to funding, partly due to mismanagement in bodies like the NHS, situations that have been going on for decades. Post-Diagnostic Assessments are a vital tool and are a baseline for establishing level of autism and appropriate supports, which must become a basic legal entitlement for those diagnosed and a basic legal obligation on all public and private bodies, baked into professional standards, including the NHS, especially since many more people are going to be diagnosed later in life and this is going to pose a serious problem with an ageing autistic population who are going to need enhanced support in old age, even though currently there is way too much focus on children’s autism, which gets the lions share of autism related funding. further, at an even deeper level, I firmly believe this to be an ethical and a moral issue, because it involves the “casting adrift” of a whole group of people in our times, a situation that can never be morally nor ethically justified. Aside from how the NHS was set up many decades ago in its history, I recall hearing from my grandparents generation and reading of various accounts from history of how Irish Catholic Nuns ran many of the Irish hospitals decades ago before the Health Boards and later on the HSE came in and the model that the Nuns set up was copied elsewhere as the “Gold Standard” of healthcare, including in Africa and in the US  - it was only after the nuns stopped their involvement did standards start to slip because the nuns (and Irish nurses trained by them who later on worked in the NHS) very much saw their role as being more than “just a job” it was a vocation, it was their whole life, something that also applied to teachers, police officers and many others and this was clearly underpinned by deep religious-based convictions, social norms and moral values of that time 

Time and again, this all points to the need for post-diagnostic assessments following diagnosis to correctly and in a systematic way assess level of autism following the issue of diagnosis report, especially in the case of online diagnosis and for those diagnosed later in life, also to properly identify appropriate supports that may be required going forward, taking into account latest research from overseas on autism. those in charge are clearly not prepared to properly fund these efforts and even my own diagnosis in 2021, carried out online during Covid (used as an easy excuse for everything), was outsourced to a private body via the NHS, where too many assumptions about health, disability, mental health and hidden disabilities are being made, which is leading to all manner of stereotypes, myths and prejudiced attitudes, which having been diagnosed later in life myself, I was shocked to see the lack of support out there and even where the general public do not even have the basic information about autism and hidden disabilities, which along with mental health in general is not even considered “real” and is the poor relation when it comes to funding, partly due to mismanagement in bodies like the NHS, situations that have been going on for decades. Post-Diagnostic Assessments are a vital tool and are a baseline for establishing level of autism and appropriate supports, which must become a basic legal entitlement for those diagnosed and a basic legal obligation on all public and private bodies, baked into professional standards, including the NHS, especially since many more people are going to be diagnosed later in life and this is going to pose a serious problem with an ageing autistic population who are going to need enhanced support in old age, even though currently there is way too much focus on children’s autism, which gets the lions share of autism related funding. further, at an even deeper level, I firmly believe this to be an ethical and a moral issue, because it involves the “casting adrift” of a whole group of people in our times, a situation that can never be morally nor ethically justified. Aside from how the NHS was set up many decades ago in its history, I recall hearing from my grandparents generation and reading of various accounts from history of how Irish Catholic Nuns ran many of the Irish hospitals decades ago before the Health Boards and later on the HSE came in and the model that the Nuns set up was copied elsewhere as the “Gold Standard” of healthcare, including in Africa and in the US  - it was only after the nuns stopped their involvement did standards start to slip because the nuns (and Irish nurses trained by them who later on worked in the NHS) very much saw their role as being more than “just a job” it was a vocation, it was their whole life, something that also applied to teachers, police officers and many others and this was clearly underpinned by deep religious-based convictions, social norms and moral values of that time