Aspies For Freedom

Maybe you should point out to them what it actually says in the DSM. It doesn't say "X out of Y" symptoms for each category for nothing! It's frightening, that someone supposedly learned in these things (I am pretty sure psychologists are meant to know how to use the DSM!) can be so scarily ignorant  :shock:

Having said that, I wouldn't exactly trust a psychologist who doesn't have a clue about AS and only tries to diagnose based on a checklist anyway. I mean how do you know she actually understands what each point means if she's not got the experience and tries to 'improvise'? (The fact that she is just running down the list and tries to interpret it her way without comprehending what it says on the page is not exactly indicative of such experience!)

It occurs to me that the curebie services oriented toward aspie children would not get their funding if it was proven that the children grow up to be adults who are not "cured".  Those services have an interest in ensuring that Aspie adults remain invisible.

I have highlighted the criteria which I fulfill.

The following criterion are from the 2000 Revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fourth Edition-Text (DSM IV-TR). See the DSM IV-TR manual for details and examples. Note: Asperger's Disorder is one of five specific Pervasive Developmental Disorders listed in the DSM IV-TR under the general heading of Pervasive Developmental Disorders.

   1. Qualitative impairment in social interaction, as manifested by at least two of the following:

1. marked impairment in the use of multiple nonverbal behaviors such as eye-to eye gaze, facial expression, body postures, and gestures to regulate social interaction

2. failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to developmental level

3. a lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests, or achievements with other people (e.g., by a lack of showing, bringing, or pointing out objects of interest to other people)

4. lack of social or emotional reciprocity

2. Restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests, and activities, as manifested by at least one of the following:

1. encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity of focus

2. apparently inflexible adherence to specific, nonfunctional routines or rituals

3. stereotyped and repetitive motor mannerisms (e.g., hand or finger flapping or twisting, or complex whole-body movements)

4. persistent preoccupation with parts of objects

3. The disturbance causes clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

4. There is no clinically significant general delay in language (e.g., single words used by age 2 years, communicative phrases used by age 3 years).

5. There is no clinically significant delay in cognitive development or in the development of age-appropriate self-help skills, adaptive behavior (other than in social interaction), and curiosity about the environment in childhood.

6. Criteria are not met for another specific Pervasive Developmental Disorder or Schizophrenia.

I agree. In my area in order to get disability allowance you have to get lengthy reports from two different doctors.  Then you have to get a third report from an assessor who is either an nurse or a social worker.  It took me eight months to find the professionals who were trained to do these assessments.  One simple thing the local autism society could do is to keep a database of the professionals who can do the diagnosis, but they don't.  I think that service is outside the mandate of the autism society because the current government would not support $$ such a referral service for all the reasons you have described.  I'm going to write a letter to complain.

The Canadian ministry of employment and training (the ones who do employment insurance) -  the website says that for help in getting a job, self-indentified disabled (not getting disability pension or EI or welfare/workfare) can get help.  They are supposed to call their local EI/training office.  Have you tried this?  I am thinking of doing this but if the people there have no experience with autism or AS, they might be of no help.  

Getting a disability allowance in Canada means you must fit some very strict criteria.   Even if you do, you will have to resubmit the applications every few years even if you know you are not going to "get better".  Anyway you will only get less than $1000 per month most likely.  I think even a minimum wage job would be more in most places.  If you could get assisted housing and assistance at work, you would be better off financially.  Whether you can work or not really depends on your abilities and I am not trying to judge you.

There is supposed to be some help getting us jobs.  What I need is help applying for jobs, help at interviews and some job coaching for the first few weeks.  I might need some on going support while working if some difficulties arise.  But really, all this is not as expensive as someone going on disability pension.  If we are working, we are paying taxes.

M, I don't know about you but Paul Martin and his government don't do anything good for the likes of me. In Canada we have two tiered system in which paid workers contribute to Employment Insurance so that if they are laid off they are supposed to get payment while unemployed. There's a huge scandal going on right now with the EI surplus. The federal government has made EI much harder to get, particularly for women or disabled people.  There's $44 billion dollars sitting in surplus in that fund while more and more workers are being pushed onto the second tier of income assistance which is welfare.

Here's one news article about the scandal: http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/2...8150507101

One of my interests was to research the employment assistance programs. These mandatory job search programs have no greater success rate than if people had gone out to look for jobs themselves without the programs.  Not only that, but the amounts of money that the government pays to corporations and privatized job clubs to process and shuffled around these job seekers is astronomical.  A typical scenario is that XYZ corporation gets paid $2 million to "train" seven people. There's absolutely no accountability to the public at all.  It's nothing but a rip off of the taxpayer.  As well, in a capitalist economy there will always be a certain percentage of the population unemployed and this is happening in increasing numbers because of the policies instituted under NAFTA.  If you actually know of a disabled person who made it out of poverty with the help of any of these programs I would be very interested to hear about that.

The point of my post was that I received no assistance from my local autism society to contact any diagnosticians. That organization is funded by government and takes it upon itself to inform government about the needs of autistic people. I would like to know what they actually DO for autistic people since they can't even seem to organize to fulfill a basic need like a list of available diagnosticians for adults. I will find out and post again.

Okay, I called around and basically staff at the BC based autism societies told me that the government has cut funding that would allow them to provide any diagnosis, advocacy or referral lists for adults with autism. So now they only deal with children's needs which consists of organizing speakers to talk about treatment.  The Autism Society of BC told me that they used to have diagnosticians on staff who would do direct assessments of adults but the funding for this service was cut.

I have a few numbers for diagnosticians who can do this service at relatively low cost for adults but none of these organizations showed much interest in taking these phone numbers. I asked the staff point blank if the government would cut their funding if they provided such a referral list to adults in need of diagnosis. Of course I did not get a clear answer from either organization but one staff member told me that the provincial government has placed that responsibility on the family and friends of those adults with autism.

You see? The cure industry gets funding from the government in exchange for an implicit agreement to deny the basic survival needs of those children when they grow up to become autistic adults.  

This is a fraud and abuse.

Well Amy, because of your wonderful forum I've met someone whose going to contact me when he comes to the lowermainland end of October. Hopefully we can get something started to provide for the rights of autistic adults because right now no such organization exists here whatsoever.

I have contacted an agency for help with job search for people with disability in Toronto.  http://www.linkup.ca/about_us.html
I am waiting for them to call me.

I believe all they might do is tell me how to make applications to companies and some job search techniques.  I do not know if they have any job coaching or placements.  I never used to tell people I had a disability but somehow some employers I have had are finding out about my AS.  I want accommodations for my disability and to learn the best way to approach employers with that.  

It is true about most of the government programs being useless.  I have partcipated in a few not related to disability.  There was one EI program where I got a placement for 4 months for "job experience".  Mostly I just did data entry and wash glassware.  None of the technicians wanted to teach us anything and just were annoyed we were there.  At the end, they told us that there were no jobs available.  I did get a job after in a new graduate program.  Half of my salary was to be paid by a government agency.  When the employer asked me to sign the contract he had not filled in the salary part.   I told him to fill it in before I signed it.  I had a friend in a similar program, the employer told the government they were paying her $14/hr but they only paid her $7.  So they were getting her to work for them for free  (fraud).  Two weeks after I signed the contract I was laid off until they would call me back.  After a few months I got another job and phoned them.  The officer from the government agency called me after sometime and told me that I should not have broken the contract.  I told me then WHY WAS I LAID OFF THEN?   Fraud again.    Another time I got off EI to work in what was promised as temporary maybe.  After 4 months the scientists laid me off because he could get funding to hire a student for the summer but no funding for me.  I went back on EI who yelled at me for accepting temporary employment instead of permanent.  

Workers in the EI are more concerned with finding ways to disqualify people from getting benefits.  They will even tell you that they are not there to help anyone get a job.  I think they even get bonuses on how many people they kick out.  Some people were kicked out for traveling or doing volunteer work.

Yes, and these agencies get paid to put people into the "just in time" workforce.  "Just in time" means you're there when the employer needs you but can be laid off when the subsidy runs out.  It hardly matters because by the time you've paid busfare and bought clothes to go to these low wage jobs you're hardly better off and sometimes worse off. Of course when it comes to disabled people there's even more propaganda about how it's supposed to be good for our "self esteem" to be in paid employment. As well, after you get laid off then you get penalized for it at EI or welfare. It's such a scam.  

The most appalling thing of all is that the BC government cut the daycare subsidy rate so that any woman making over $1400 CDN (about 700 British pounds) is no longer eligible to have daycare costs covered.  So if a single mom in BC does manage to make anything over $1400 she's got to pay a third of that to a babysitter.

The United Nations has singled our provincial government for it's appalling treatment of women and the disabled.  At least two groups of people here took over a welfare office to protest the cuts to disabiity and they were pepper sprayed and beaten up by Victoria police.  One person the police  roughed up was a woman in a wheelchair, and in the other group a 65 year old man.

By my calculations it is better to stay on disability allowance and try to create your own opportunities.  In BC in order to get disability your doctor has to emphasize the co-morbids.

Amy, the cutoff for daycare subsidy here in BC is when your income is the equivalent of 700 pounds per MONTH.  I think all of our costs of living are basically the same as in UK except dairy and meat is twice as expensive in UK.  I know because one of my interests was to compare costs of living by looking at Tesco and Asda websites.

In Ontario nondisabled single mothers on income assistance have to go out to look for work when their youngest child reaches age 6 months.  Here in British Columbia a single mom can stay home until her youngest child reaches 3 years of age.  

We have homeless families now in BC. We did not see this phenomenom previous to the current provincial government's policies.  I watched the anti-poverty movement over a twenty year period. They had lots of protests, but I think the mistake they made was that they did not focus on building a strong community and instead tried to manipulate the media through their protests that they hoped would be shown on the nightly news. The antipoverty movement was mostly led by unencumbered young men. This was a huge error, I think, and really set us back.

With the subsidy we can hire whoever we choose to babysit. My mother does it for me and she gets $391 per month for caring for my three children.  I should tell you that my disability allowance has not been processed yet, so I am studying part time while my youngest child is under three years of age. The daycare subsidy will only pay for 20 hours per month.  We don't have to use any designated daycare providers.

A policy like that here would deny employment to many low income women who pay their bills by babysitting several different children.  An unlicenced provider can get paid for taking on three children here.  Beyond that number of children you do have to have a licence to do childcare but the licence is easy to get.

That's probably a much better system for the children.

i always passed very well when little. it was mainly because of being very good at reading and writing very early. no language problems. i found words fascinating. i was easy to have in class because i was very quiet. i was popular because i drew very well. mainly i drew for hours.

i had lots of ear infections and bugs.

my brothers were louder and had some illness that occupied parents. i switched off and drew. i hung out with my brothers mainly. i was chosen as a friend by others at school because of the drawing. i never learnt to make friends. we had a trampoline which made us popular in the neighbourhood and was very good for coordination. i played hockey but was not much good.

at puberty i had problems because other things became cool. being able to be active in conversation and know what to say to sell yourself. knowing what to wear and what music to listen to. i was still well known for the art.  but i began to be noticed for the clueless social thing and the nose rubbing. i decided i wanted to be good at hockey so i worked hard at hitting and became a representative player who could hit but not tackle.  oneday i had to referee and i was bad so they got someone else.

i started to realise something was wrong. but the intelligence was still carrying me. i became very good at music and spent most of my time at high school with other musicians. my dad died and i could do only music. everything else went down the toilet. i had a sense of impending doom. i could not understand things fast, but i could describe what i could not understand, because i did not have the words.

i began to be obsessed by words. i wrote a lot. i felt like i was trying to search for something and if i did not find it, bad things would happen. so i played flute for hours and i wrote. and i withdrew. i had counsellors but i did not understand what i was supposed to say, so i did not say anything.

i started to stop many things. i stopped eating. i stopped talking. i stopped music. i kept writing. i got sent to a psychiatric hospital. i thought i might stop breathing. there were so many words i knew but none of them had any meaning.

now i know the problems with the words is that i have to use them to communicate myself to other people. i have to use them to construct connections between the bits. if i do not use them to tell someone else i have feelings then i do not have any feelings. no one can see inside unless i tell them. i was copy of many bits. this is my language. it is not done the right way.

but it sounds like me. i found i could say my self on the internet. i do not think experts are very in sightful. they wish for behaviour to observe. a person can be very different inside from outside.

i do feel like i have lied all my life without realising. now i tell truth it is not easy. but it is what i want. i do not want for someone else to tick any boxes. any fool can do that.

becca