Social Services/Community Mental Health Teams

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What are your experiences with Social Services i.e Social Workers and/or Community Mental Health Teams i.e CPN's (Community Psychiatric Nurse), Crisis Teams etc?

Do you feel such organisations are ineffective and/or perhaps "useless" when it comes to dealing with those on the spectrum, more specifically of course, those with AS in the UK?

If so, do any of you outside of the UK have more positive views of professional services where you are?

Thanks.

I have never heard of such a thing...Unless you are crazy enough to get committed by the city...(I have a freind who has been sent to the psych ward, and is due to go again)....Mental health professionals are prohibitively expensive and hard to come by with or without insurance.

Unless your AS is so severe that you have had an early intervention, ie. childhood, or that the intervention is forced upon you for another reason, the National Health Service mental health teams seem to need much prompting as to what to look for and do with regard to AS.
I was fortunate in that when I went to see my general practitioner, he was quite prepared to refer me to a consultant psycologist. In both cases, I went along prepared, with details of where I was on the autistic spectrum in regards to AS, and how it impacted on my life.
I'm not sure that Mental Health Teams and CPN's are fully aware of th spectrum of AS, because there seems to be a concensus, unless you need 24hr care, then you dont necessarily have a problem
Having said all that, I've got another appointment tomorrow with the consultant psycologist......

My local community mental health team were woeful. In their defence the service was overshadowed by problems up above in the NHS and many of the team were unsuitable for working with people let alone people with a variety of problems. I think all teams are different but in the UK mental health is vastly underfunded and department stress runs high.
Some individual CPN's are probably fantastic, positive helpful: the lot, my experience was the opposite. The first CPN who visited the house was awkward, irritable and had very poor social skills the next bloke nearly sent me over the edge I walked back from the surgery drained and dispondent. He told me do you ever think you will have a life? He was a trained engineer so god knows what he was doing working with people.
Thirdly I was referred to an occupational therapist (OT) she was due to retire so could'nt really be arssed with organising classes. Every group was filled with her voice talking about her exotic holidays and her strife with NHS managers, something people with depression don't need to hear. Painting, writing and clay making classes had a low attendance. These were partially attended by mothers with post natal depression and psychiatric "right offs" (people who had been conditioned to think they were buggered and medicated to the hilt). Giving adults dot the dot pics to do is just bloodly ridiculous! I enjoyed the routine of attending and making stuff but spending time with the OT and the dark mood of others depression had a detrimental effect so I quit.
Also it struck me how many people had been seemingly misdiagnosed one woman who clearly had ADHD was medicated for bipolar no wonder the drugs didn't work, another woman obviously had autism and learning difficulties etc I tend to avoid NHS teams now! All the CPN's I spoke to could'nt give a rats arse about neuro develolmental disorders you're either psychotic or perfectly healthy theres no middle ground. Very ignorant and not educated with regard to ASD's and new interventions for NDD's or psychiatric illness.

am have a social worker [under the learning disabilities team] all though she only deals with paperwork and back up for am now as she thinks she does not need to bother anymore.
am do have a lot of support due to living in a residential home [several key workers],they have all done more for am than she ever did.
they are useless for people who are medium functioning autistic,or higher-or aspergic.
am have had a speech therapist under the same social services/learning disability team for a long time now but he actually understands autism and does not treat am like a ret*d.

there terrible. i was going here: http://www.tgcaz.org/

it looks nice but it is EXTREMELY unprofessional, recently they called me after 4 months to trick me into calling them so they could ask if i wanted to still be a client there, but on the answering machine they said they wanted to talk to me about my finachial situation and copays. liars, oh and they changed my casemanger without telling me. wich is why i told them to take me off there list of clients when i called there dumbasses up the other day.

they didnt do anything for me, didnt help me with VR didnt help me get on SSDI nothing. i did it all with my moms help

Congratulations Mr. Benson for 3 days of abstinence! I'm proud of you!

Thankfully the OT's I work with (I am an OT student*) understand the concept of illness being a social contruct, determined by the consensus values of the medico-social bourgeoisie. Hence, they are fully aware that illness is about areas of dysfunction rather than symptoms and diagnosis.

*which means I have to work with people all day everyday. Great job for a pre-diagnosis aspie

I've had a lot of problems with the psychiatrists in my CMHT as they really don't understand AS and are very into the freudian model and the psychodynamic model.

As for the psychotherapists, the first time I tried to see them, they were so mean to me on the phone that I was too scared to go and had to be re-referred to a psychiatrist.

The second time I got referred, when they found out that I wasn't NT and that the freudian and psychodynamic models had never worked for me in the past, they said they could't help me and threw me out!!

Fortunately there is now a team of people (all three of them!) who have just set up a neuro-behavioural clinic. Although they just offer diagnosis and monitoring at the moment - they have no facilities or money to offer any other services, although they do write recommendations for support, housing and therapy to the CMHT - it's just a case of whether anyone else actually bothers to implement these recomendations.

I have a social worker who is very good. He is even going to speak to the Neuro-behavioural team to learn more about ASDs! But it took me YEARS to get a social worker, and I've been told that I can only see my Social Worker for a temporary period.

I have never had one and I never will have one whatsoever

I had keyworkers at school and they were alright but I wouldn't say they were good and I wouldn't say they were bad they did do there job though.

I went to see the consultant psychoplogist, a couple of days ago, and now wish I didn't! Within 8 minutes of us meeting, he decided that I didn't 'present' as AS and so had a 'schizophrenic personality disorder', not AS, and that he disagreed with the other consultant that I had originaly seen. He said it there was little point in referring me to maudsley hostpital for further tests/analasys as there is no funding left for AS patients, so he was going to send me to someone for 'cognetive behaviour therapy' instead; by the end of the session, after much 'heated' debate he appeared to accept that I was indeed AS, and that I had the right to decide for myself if I should see the people he wanted to referr me to. As I pointed out to the other consultant, all I wanted was confirmation/closure about AS. I think he wanted to find a problem to fix:x