Monday 6 October 2014

Care issues

I have been receiving support since October 2009, this was originally 1.5hrs with  Second Step and 1.5hrs with National Autistic Society.  Over the years as my disability worsened I required more and more hours, I had to drop Second Step and now I'm up to 17hrs a week with the National Autistic Society.

Recently there has been a change in the rules requiring the NAS to provide everybody support times same every week.  This doesn't work if the client needs to go somewhere at a different time for whatever reason such as medical appointments that they have no control over the time it is.  If the person needs a different time they have to get permission to have it changed from the council.  Just utterly ridiculous.  For example I would like to attend a Trans group in Taunton, so I had to ring social services to pass on a message that I would like to get permission because 1) group is out of area, 2) It's not during my usual support times, 3) it's in the evening and 4) it's more than my usual hours for a Saturday.  Previously they would shift it around so I took the extra hours from another session.  Now they are a lot less flexible than before because of all the rule changes.  I used to have a autism specific social worker but now the new ones no longer case hold so this request will go through to the adult social work team who have never met me before for a review.  All this just to be able to go to one group.

The other new thing they are introducing is a phone clocking in and out system.  So the support workers will have to clock in and out using my home phone to do it.  Another pointless waste of time.  It's like they want to make it as difficult as possible to change anything or do anything.

I'm lucky to be getting any support at all as the only reason I get support is because of the autism act. Without that I would be getting nothing.  I'm not getting it because of my physical disabilities.