Adult autism sufferers ‘cast adrift’

Autism sufferers are being “cast adrift” when they become adults because of a lack of knowledge and awareness among health and social care staff, MPs have said.
  The Commons public accounts committee said too many went unhelped unless they developed more serious problems.

It demanded action to get more people with autism into work, following research which found only 15 per cent were in full-time work despite having valuable skills.

They launched an investigation after public spending watchdog the National Audit Office found half the estimated 400,000 adults in England with autism may be falling through the gaps.

In the report, the MPs said local bodies lacked “sufficient awareness of the number and needs of people with autism in their area” meaning they could not plan services properly.

The transition from children’s to adult services “is often poorly managed”, it found, with the education or employment status of almost a third of 16-24s with learning difficulty or disability unknown to the Connexions body charged with supporting them as of December 2008.

Potential employers and Jobcentre Plus staff also showed “a lack of awareness and knowledge” of autism, it found, meaning many capable workers were not taken on.

The committee set out a range of measures it said should be included in a adult autism strategy due to be published next year by the Department of Health, among them collating existing data to ensure all adults with autism were identified, and extra autism content in the GP training curriculum.

“Adults with autism are being left to fend for themselves, with all the consequences this has for their access to further education, benefits or employment, and for their mental health”, said Tory MP Edward Leigh, the committee chairman.

“A critical point is the transition from the relatively structured framework of services for children to adulthood. It is like being cast adrift.

“This lamentable situation is down to a chronic lack of information about what happens to many over-16s with autism, as well as poor planning, sharing of data and co-ordination of working between key individuals in health, social care, education and employment organisations.

“The Department of Health’s proposed autism strategy, to be published by April 2010, is an excellent opportunity to set out how each of the recommendations by the National Audit Office and this committee is to be implemented and by when.”

Research published earlier this week found that a third of people with autism currently live without a job and without benefits.

Many are forced to rely on family and friends for the basic means to live, and some have been in this situation for more than a decade, said the charity the National Autistic Society (NAS).

It discovered that almost four fifths of people with autism on Incapacity Benefit want to work, while more than a third said their Disability Employment Adviser’s knowledge of autism was “very bad” or “bad”.