Hiya!
I think I had to wait a couple of years, maybe 2.5 - this was around 2020.
Look into
Right to Choose if you haven't already as it can shorten waiting times (I can only imagine how long it would have been if I hadn't done this). The NDSA website also has
a lot of useful reading in relation to diagnoses.
How would I get involved with autism campaigns to try to change the currently scandalous setup here in the U.K. and to get the relevant laws changed, as later in life diagnosed myself in 2019, outsourced by the NHS to private provider and diagnosis carried out online over Zoom in 2021 with zero follow up nor other support, including via the NHS here in Manchester, which only pays lip service to the limited support supposedly provided, tied to catchment areas, not available online - the fact is there are no real supports for autistic adults here in the U.K. and without an (utterly vital) post diagnostic assessment, one has no idea what supports one actually needs in any area of life - I’ve tried to explain this elsewhere to family in Ireland but they just don’t get it, they keep banging on about children’s autism ad infinitim - inter alia, given the growing number of adults in the U.K. with some sort of formally diagnosed mental health issue or hidden disability where the NHS is no longer fit for purpose, given the decades-long documented mismanagement and wastage in the NHS, where autistic people are simply fobbed off and are not taken seriously, all mental health and hidden disability needs its own separate body, properly managed and run, away from the NHS entirely - all existing autism related legislation simply does not give enough protection for the rights of autistic people and its long past time that our political leaders were robustly challenged on their abject failures to date - carrying out assessments (for whatever purpose), using third party companies and other providers (which is generating huge profits for private providers) is hugely wasteful of taxpayers money and it’s the same with the DWP, who should not be tasked with providing financial support to autistic people and people with diagnosed mental health conditions - when I did a search on chat GPT to search for relevant support, it made me think about the history of the NHS and of how many of the Irish nurses in the early days of the NHS gained their nursing qualifications in Irish hospitals were trained by Irish Catholic Nuns who ran the Irish hospitals properly and for those nursing religious sisters, it was far more than just a 9-5 job, the commitment they had was their whole life’s work, it was a vocation - and they passed those values onto the Irish nurses that they trained - it’s hugely ironic that when those elderly Irish ex-nurses retired and needed care in the present-day NHS it became very clear that standards had slipped significantly in the modern day NHS and many of the families of those ex-nurses who passed recount horrifying examples of poor standards of care, which at age 55 myself, I can relate to - to me, above all else, this is a moral and ethical issue, in a supposedly caring and compassionate, civilised society, underpinned by Christian ethical and moral principles and values and it is utterly unacceptable and scandalous that we as autistic people are forced to fight to self-advocate for the support that we need daily - following on from events with the Maid programme in Canada, the bill on the “Liverpool care pathway” was (narrowly) defeated in the Commons, but the margin was (terrifyingly) close - in short, the post-diagnosis assessment, properly carried out, must become a basic legal entitlement of autistic people and a basic legal responsibility of all public and private healthcare providers and the report generated from this post-diagnosis assessment must become a basic legally binding document, with copies of same circulated to all relevant providers as well as to the person diagnosed, setting out in precise terms healthcare and other providers legal responsibilities to that person - in terms of enforcement, any failures to do so, however minor, must trigger a full police investigation and possible criminal charges once a file has been sent to the CPS - many autism campaign groups and the legal teams acting on behalf of autistic people are locked in legal battles with the state and the NHS lasting several years and even these Solictors and barristers have called on the government to do more, because when challenged on thier failures in the courts, senior management in the NHS has citied “lack of funding” as a legal “defence” - that’s corruption 101 and those senior managers should be facing criminal prosecution and jail time, given the terrible situations that other autistic people are trapped in - added to this, based on prejudice, misinformation, stereotypes and point-blank refusal to understand nor be educated on autism and mental health/hidden disability issues, we see articles appearing online suggesting that “all mental health, hidden disabilities and autism are fake (even in the case of those formally diagnosed with autism and other hidden disabilities/mental health issues) and that those looking for support are “attention-seeking” where “we can’t be bothered” to “hand hold” people with these conditions”
NDSA
Sitemap
