Welcome to A.S.S.G.O
AS Support Group Online
My findings
After spending months collecting information from my feedback froms, website visitors and people enquiring about various things on my behalf. I have come to the conclusion that the following needs to be done which I've listed below:
Autism outreach services made compulsory in schools and colleges
After my own misfortunes I did some investigation into this. Not all schools/colleges have these. As there is a growing autistic/asperger population in the UK alone this should be made a must have in them all. Special needs departments are all very well but Aspergers/Autism need a completely different level of care compared with a lot of special needs because of it's varying complex spectrum raising from classic autism non verbal to high funtioning Asperger. Let's face it the staff who work in schools/colleges aren't trained to deal with Aspergers properly from the proof I have found. Too many Aspies have lost their education and prospects through this lack of schools/colleges not going for these services because it costs them money. They think their special needs staff will deal with it, but it doesn't work like that because they aren't trained on all aspects of aspergers/autism a lot of them appear frightened of us. This even goes for special schools/colleges because they also need to know what they're doing more so.
Training given to people who deal with the general public
I think this is an absolute must. There is nothing worse when you go to a place and the people who work there gives you 'that look' as if to say they don't trust you because you act differently. Even public sector workers who are suppose to be trained sometimes do that. You have to be a paitent person to deal with the public and not all I've been involved with have been like that. Also people who work in public service places i.e connexions for young people shouldn't be judgemental and label people they have to work with. They should keep their opions to themselves and be professional because their judgement could be totally wrong of that person. Anyone caught to be doing this should be disaplined severely, or if it destroys the persons life because of the referrences they've passed on then it should be instant dismissle.
Improvements made to existing autism and aspergers services
The services haven't got the funding that's needed. To me all the services aren't very good.The fact that people have to be referred by a social workers etc just isn't right for everyone. People should be able to ask for themselves. Individuals should judge whether they need a service that someone offers not social workers etc because they can't judge you as well as you can yourself. Also the services need revising and people need to do a little less talking and more action.
