I'm so very, very angry at them. At best they are utterly incompetent and at worst they are dishonest and stepping way outside their remit. Sorry, I'm pregnant and need to rant to release some of the stress so I can stop crying and calm down.
I have AS and need a little bit of support in the home. I'm not in the UK and here there is a specialist unit at the hospital to support people with autism. They have done a referral to the local SS for me. There are certain support services which adults with autism are entitled to by law in this country, once a referral is made.
SS have rejected this referral as they say they think my difficulties are down to low self-asteem. In their opinion I don't have autism. Despite a team of autism experts carrying out a full assessment and diagnosing autism. Their report was full of blatant mistakes and outright falsehoods. EG saying things were said in our meeting which weren't. I can prove this as the whole thing was recorded.
The autism unit couldn't believe the referral was rejected. They deal with people in my circumstance all day every day. They say they have never had a referral rejected before and the fact they are dismissing my diagnosis is unacceptable. So we appealed to the council's social services appeal board. The appeal included reports from my consultant, physiotherapist, occupational therapist, psychologist and a full and detailed correction of all the mistakes from me. I was told that if this appeal failed the file is then automatically passed to the County Court for review.
It was rejected.
So for the past 6 months I've been waiting for the County Court appeal, which is all done on the file, not in person. I've just got a letter from the County Court saying my appeal will be done on 27th December and if I want to have any further evidence taken into account it has to reach them by Friday. They have sent me a copy of the file to date which they have received for me to review. They have only been sent the original Social Services report and a note stating that I was asked for further information, as were the hospital unit, but we have declined to submit further information.
I can't believe that these people are given responsibility for organising care for vulnerable people. I wouldn't trust them to care for an ant farm.
I've tried to get hold of the hospital unit, the court clerk, a translator, one of the incompetents at Social Services, etc but of course, no bugger is around as it's Christmas.
I feel like I'm going to have a heart attack.
/rant
:(