Advice please

puzzleheaded
puzzleheaded Community member Posts: 1 Listener
in Work

Trigger warning; mentions of self-harm and sui!cide.

Hi everyone, i’m puzzleheaded

26 year old diagnosed autistic female.

I have on going mental health issues, generalised anxiety and depression. At the beginning of summer my mental health declined severely that I made two attempts of overdose. After that I was referred to a local psychiatrist and given medication and was offered more talking therapy. I would say I am now 80% better, but there are moments I feel very low and I know some of its because I’m not working and I have no social life.

I claim LCWRA and PIP. I am also living in temporary accommodation via my council - awaiting permanent housing.
Financially I feel it suits me better to keep all of my benefits as I am in temporary housing and not paying rent - as if I were working rent money would be coming out of my wages and I would have less money to live off.

I have not worked for a number of years and I only have a couple of GCSE’s.
The last jobs I had were pre-autism diagnosis, working in a warehouse and caring for a family member.
I don’t feel I would cope going to college to gain qualifications but perhaps there is a way I could do this from home or centre. I live in South West England.

My local mental health team has said they could help me with employment but I’m very worried about how that will go, given I have not worked in years and have little qualifications.

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Comments

  • chiarieds
    chiarieds Community member Posts: 16,362 Championing

    Hi @puzzleheaded - & welcome to the community. Scope has a 'Support to work' programme for disabled people, which you may find helpful:

    https://www.scope.org.uk/employment-services

  • Albus_Scope
    Albus_Scope Posts: 6,999 Online Community Coordinator

    Hey @puzzleheaded and a big welcome from me too!

    As Chiarieds has said, we do offer support to work, which is well worth you checking out.
    I'm also late diagnosed autistic (with only GCSEs) and had major mental health issues and didn't think I'd work again. So working is doable with some reasonable adjustments put in place and it's really helped my mental health. Do you have any idea of what you'd like to do?

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