Not declaring disability when applying.

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I live in the U.K.
I have been screened for Asperger's syndrome and have been placed on a waiting list for a full assessment.
So I do not have a diagnosis, and I may never get one. However, it is also possible that in three or four months time I will have a diagnosis.

I am applying for a job with the council. Nothing major, just a temporary assisting function. I need to fill out a whole pack of forms.
One question asks if you have a disability or not. Obviously I ticked 'no' but what would happen if I do get diagnosed? Would I need to declare it anyway.
I don't think I would because the job is only for a few months, but I would like to know what the usual procedure is for this.

Does anyone know?

No idea about UK law, but in the U.S you are never required to disclose any disability, it is always a choice.

There have been cases where people have got sacked for not declaring their disabilities.

There is no law stating you have to tell them. But you can't moan if they don't know and don't made reasonable adjustments as a result of it.

You do not have to declare any disability, however if you do not declare it then you cannot ask for extra support or reasonable adjustments further down the line.

In your case, as you do not yet have an official diagnosis it is quite OK to tick the 'no' box. If later on you did find you needed reasonable adjustments, you could simply explain that you only received your diagnosis after you had applied.

Good luck with your assessment, and the job hunt

But I cannot declare a disability that I may not even get diagnosed with, can I? How would that work?

Also, I don't agree with that if they don't know a person can't complain if no reasonable adjustments are made. Every individual has strengths and weaknesses, and a good employer should be considerate about that, whether the employee has a disability or not.
It's stupid to expect every person to fit into a narrowly defined box of abilities and behaviour, and the fact that it's done a lot anyway does not make it right.

This is what we should have in the U.S, instead here the laws says even if you disclose your need for accommodations after you are hired your employer must still provide reasonable accommodation for you. In the eyes of the law here, your need for reasonable accommodation is totally irrelevant if you should be hired or not, and cannot be factor at all.

Also it is very much illegal to sack someone in the U.S for declaring their disability after they are hired, it is a excellent way for someone to win money in a ADA lawsuit.

Thank you for replying.

It's funny, but I have worked in one place where, looking back, quite a few adjustments were made for me even though I had no declared disability and at the time not even suspected that I might have.
I was working on a school for kids with special needs though; maybe my boss thought I was too much like some of the pupils.

I spend breaktimes on my own, at the computer, without anyone commenting on it.
I was the only one who was not expected to spend the nights at the school camp (I did go there all day, for which I had to travel nearly two hours each way, but that was better than staying the evenings and nights!). And a few other things too.
Perhaps I should write a note to my old boss to thank him....

As for this job - if I get it is should end at most a month after I could possibly receive a diagnosis, so there'd be no point in declaring a disability. I was just curious.

How would they be expected to know what to adjust if they are not told?

If all the staff were able to request adjustments there would probably be too many requests made.



Did your job description require you so supervise the children during breaktimes (and overnight when at camp)? If it did then your boss gave you more than a reasonable adjustment as he excused you from doing some of your duties.

Oh no, I was supposed to supervise at some times, and I did that. I didn't mind supervising. I loved the kids. Just the times that I was not on the schedule to supervise I was left alone, and not pushed to join colleagues. Which sounds like something logical, but it isn't. In other jobs I was pushed and more or less ordered to lunch with colleagues because that was good for team building. It was horrible. I used to sit there, with lots of people around me talking, and I couldn't follow the conversation. I always got negative comments about not connecting to colleagues, no matter how wellI did in the actual work with the kids. So when I landed a job where this was different, I did think it rather special.

As for the nights: There were enough people staying overnight, who did not want to go home because it would be too much fuss for them to go up and down. I guess that if that had not been the case they may have pushed me. I don't know. I just made sure I was back before all the children were up. I did get elaborate thanks for my contributions to the school camps though, so I suppose I did more than I thought I did, and perhaps more than I was expected to do. I was only a part time educational assistant.

Maybe adjustments is not the right word. I did not need adjustments to do my actual job. I only needed additional consideration in interactions with colleagues.

I may need adjustments now though, because I have to do so much paperwork and I can't manage it. I understand it all, but there is so much and I cannot get it organized or decide what I need to write down and what I need to leave out. Observations are especially hard, as are risk assessments.
For instance, I was told that in my risk assessment for outings I did not need to include the possibility of a meteor striking the park, but I did need to include the possibility of a terrorist attack in that same park.
Now I don't think the chances of a terrorist attack in the dull little town where I live are much bigger than the chances of a meteor impact, but even if they are, at what level of likelihood should I stop including events in my risk assessment? And how many events should I include? The things that could happen are endless; I can never include everything.

They actually told me I needed to include everything in risk assessments, and when I tried it wasn't good, because I included too much. Well, obviously not - I had not by far included everything! Other people did not seem to have this problem. I had the same issue with observations.

That's funny, I just had to do my first risk assessment on a project recently (well, they call it a 'Business Impact Analysis' statement), and I had more difficulty with initially being too high level (ie realistic), then being too detailed (ie paranoid/over-thinking). Luckily I am only 1/3 of the project management team, between the three of us, we balanced one another out.