Well, we had the assessment for family support and the women phoned back today to say she discussed our case at Triage and they think the best service would be back at the Integrated Autism service who do group work and one to one work with families who are newly diagnosed and look at things like social communication. emotional regulation/ understanding their own behaviour, and others' perceptions and expectations, and executive functioning and so on. She said she had spoken to my H and he said he wants to do this as he wants me and the kids to be happy. I hope it helps. It depends how receptive H is to it, including how able he is to recognise his own behaviour in what they are talking about. His natural reaction is to reject any responsibility or (perceived) criticism and his self awareness is very low. But if he can try to be open to what they say it might help. And it is an autism specific service which is what I wanted. Apparently he was offered this service at the time of his diagnosis and rejected it but says he is ready to take it up now.
Despite how awful things have been over the hols, I have also noticed that he is, in his own way, really trying, at least at times. I have not been able to be very generous in response to this, so I know I have to be encouraging of his attempts and to reward the behaviour I want to see more of. He actually came to me and apologised for something the other day, which never, ever, ever happens. It was a bit of a half-arsed defensively worded apology but still, its shows he was really trying to meet what he knows I want from him.
The assessment really helped me to see how 'disabled' H is by his autism. This thread has also helped me to realise this. In the assessment H was explaining his approach to getting the kids ready in the morning ( which always kicks off) and hearing him talk about it, it was so clear how it is all from his perspective, no insight into how the kids might be feeling or thinking or what they need from him to be able to co-operate.
Anyway, I'm glad its a specialist autism service as at the assessment she was talking about how they would focus on communication, not the ND and that just set off alarm bells for me, as approaches like that before have been disastrous. the person needs to understand how ND affects people's ability to understand what they are saying, and how it affects their perception of real world situations. You can't just talk to them like you would a NT person and expect them to understand. Its not just a communication issue, its so much more than that.
Hopefully the service will help me to learn how to better communicate and interact with H too, so things can calm down a bit.