Category: Mental health

I managed to sleep for a few hours until this afternoon but it wasn’t much. I’m that tired my eyes are sore. I don’t think people realise that my past isn’t kept in the past. I’m kept on a clause for the last 15 years since I was a teenager. That is supposed to get services etc to help with my autism aftercare needs but I’ve not received anything for at least the last 6 years. They just left me on my own to do life without support. I don’t particularly like council provided support because I have my own mind and sometimes that isn’t what they want in clients. I’ve been left on it despite the council saying that due to my last support service failing (there was a lot of issues which resulted in me telling them to leave my home). They go on about needs etc but they do anything to not meet them. All they focus on is risk rather than providing supports to ensure there are no risks. Then they make situations happen which lead to risks because of how they do things. The fact that I’m stuck on this clause until I really push the council departments to take me off of it means I’m still stuck on something from my past which means I can’t fully leave it behind. It’s going to be tough going through the process because the risk assessments are always quite harsh and dehumanising. They are hurtful to read and if you’re already feeling bad about yourself it’s just going to make you feel ten times worse. I’m not a risk to anyone. I’m literally afraid of people so that’s a protective factor in my eyes (risk assessment jargon). I didn’t have that when I went into the system because involvement in the system gave me that issue. They can absolutely forget telling me I’m too vulnerable to come off of the clause after leaving me to basically fend for myself the past 6 years. When I lost my benefits on the DLA / PIP change over, I had to sort it out. There was no support to do that. I got it to tribunal to ensure I got benefits reinstated while struggling for months waiting to get a hearing. I would have been waiting longer if I hadn’t got my case slotted in on an emergency basis when I literally got to the point that I had spent most savings I put over (just in case) and literally couldn’t afford what was going out in bills etc. These aftercare clauses are meant to sort things out for clients but that never happened. I had to do it. The thing literally gives me nothing positive. The flip side has legal implications. If I don’t get off of it I can never be free to do stuff in life. They don’t tell you that side of it. The clause gives them an excuse to flag up bits of my past in the system which happened when I made the decision to have a child. If I don’t sort it out to come off of the clause they could do that in many areas of life for me. Under general rules, councils and other organisations can only keep current information dating back 6 years on each individual. The section 117 aftercare clause enables them to literally keep any bit of information from the last 15 years of my life to be highlighted now. That is unfair, especially when I found so many lies and assumptions when I started digging. Correct information is one thing, incorrect, potentially damaging, information is completely different. Anyone could look up my details and believe those things. That could lead to me being rejected before I even got a chance to be friends with others etc. That could have already happened because certain people have access to nhs information due to their professions. They aren’t supposed to peak at computer records stores on the nhs database but I bet it happens, people are just naturally nosy and those that work in certain professions are known for gaslighting disabled people. They can find every trigger relating to a certain individual by typing their name and date of birth into the database. I don’t want to be judged on information that could relate to when I was a lot younger but comes up as random highlighted information. It would explain how horribly I was treated. People were always fine with me until they’d accessed information about me. Lies, but for years I had no idea what was written and I’ve still only managed to see bits. I haven’t managed to dispute them because there is a whole complicated expensive legal process to do that which I won’t be able to afford. I know that by getting off the clause that past stuff can do less damage in my presence because they’re no longer allowed to keep old information once I’m removed from it. That is my cheapest option (well, I can’t afford the other) and if money has been given from one agency to another the whole 6 years I’ve not got services then that is also wrong.