Would support in your first few months help?

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I wonder if anybody feels that a specific support worker to help with the transition into employment would help you find and keep a job?

If so, what are the main issues you think they would be able to assist you with?

If not, why is this and what else would you like to see?

I have a job coach at a food services job. The most useful things in my opinion is that she communicates with the staff and me well, she's always there to help and keeps things simple. When I started on the job I was worried about things like my appearance/hygiene, communicating with co-workers and management. Since the job coach acted as a buffer it just became a set of things I was doing instead of the stress associated with a job which for me came from the people.

I worked at a movie theater for five years from age 16 to 21~ and the biggest issue was the managers being cryptic and my own worries about performance physically while relating to them and my co-workers. This lead to several situations where I was chastised for doing something that seemed natural to me but was strange to everyone else and my feelings of anxiety grew during that time.

Support can't do it all though, if there is major issues like you walk in to work smelling like B.O. or you get in shouting matches in public then there needs to be a tempering of skills involved at some point. In my experience B.O. has always been an issue and its a result of poor grooming habits, so a simplified long term plan is always useful and you see that in mental health thingies everywhere. Once I got the 'stride' of the job it seems easy for me to do well but things do come up from time to time and I understand that most people do not do well in those cases either.

I think support for Aspergians within the first six months of a job would be quite, quite useful.

Thanks for the replies. The job coach idea is similar to what we had in mind, but thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences Desurage.

I guess I am struck by the amount of posts in this section of the website who talk about being able to get work but then not being able to keep it - for various reasons. I just wondered whether a supporter/facilitator/mentor/peace-keeper would help people through the first few months? Lets face it, this is when most of my failures have occurred as judgemental and small minded people have decided they didn't like my way of being so I shouldn't be allowed to continue working there.

Office politics, team building events, socialising in the canteen....all of those words sends a chill down my spine as I know at best I will be exhausted by it, or at worse I will just not get it at all and make a fool of myself. Again.

I am currently 'living the dream' (genuinely) working in an autism charity, but I know, after 37 years of being exposed to the NT workplace just how hard it can be. I am looking at ways to help reduce the disgraceful number of people on the spectrum who are long term unemployed so all ideas are welcome.

Yeah, as well as I do at so many things these days, the first few months at my job were a nightmare. Not just because of problems with an ill-planned project, but, mostly with personality clashes with one manager and her influence on her staff and they way she'd tell them to treat me (tell her everything, tell her nothing, etc).
Heck, I'm still having problems. She's got some of the tech-savviest people on our team, but, she also has a couple who are very clueless and the directions they give me never make sense. Figuring out how to tell people that, as well as deal with their explosive frustration when they don't understand why we can or can't do something with my system.

I'm still learning the politics, luckily, I was assigned to a manager that I communicate well with. I've made it clear to him that if there's political minefields, he's going to have to spell them out for me in very large letters. (he's done so, warned me about an exec who I started talking to who seemed super nice, but, has a reputation for throwing people under the bus to make himself look good, so I avoid him now.)

LOL....If I were in the UK, would you hire me as a "job coach?"

That's one of the things I want to do after I retire from my present job.

Or perhaps, if it pays decently, I could so it before I retire.

Kraftiekortie, I would hire you in an instant! In all seriousness, you really should go for it, if you can bring the same level of wisdom as I see in your posts to the support role, then you would be awesome as a job coach!

MissDorkness, I so recognise the situation of bosses taking credit for my/your work and blaming others for mistakes to make them look good! It makes my blood boil! It is often the case that people are intimidated by us and it can lead to clashes; and more often than not it the Autie/Aspie who gets it in the neck! I once asked for a copy this 'rule book' that everybody else seemed to have read apart from me ; sadly that only compounded matters further isolating me and leaving me the butt of their jokes and I left the job shortly afterwards. You do sound like you have things pretty well sorted at your current employer though, I like the fact you told them you wanted things spelled out clearly! Go Girl!

Thanks for the encouragement, sir!

At one time, I so wanted to move to the UK that I actually went to a Job Centre Plus, and looked at apartment ads. My wife's son lives there; he lives in Shortlands, Bromley, SE London.

From all that I've read, my experience with other ASD people, and my own observation of my self people off the spectrum talk "emotion first" and basically shutting up or just doing what you're told and ignoring the social aspects tends to pay off.

Like when someone complains, what they really want you to do is say 'that sucks' or 'that's great'. Putting too much though into it and instead just getting down to work is important. Which is why working with people who are incompetent its important to communicate with the boss directly and show work first. The reason being that someone who gets work done is useful to the boss, and you can build them into an authoritarian buffer you don't become a target.
Skills like mirroring, going to the source, showing your work,deciding to end a conversation on your own terms, boundaries, confidence, are all vital for handling trouble spots and every person needs something different.
Then of course there is also trying again.

Sorry for the delay in replying KK, time differences and work do get in the way of my WrongPlanet time - How rude! I'm afraid London is somewhere I avoid like the plague to be honest, too big, loud, dirty, rude.....you get the picture!

Desurage, I agree with you, everybody does need something different, but I firmly believe that a generic 'Job Coach' type of person won't be particularly successful with somebody with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC). Hidden disabilities are very different from visible ones and elicit a very different response in people - I'm not making any judgement calls or ranking who has it worse by the way - I just would have loved some pointers about how to navigate the maze of office politics instead of diving straight in and being swept away by the tide. I also get rally annoyed at the advice sheets for employers that say, "give the person with ASC a mentor or contact to help them." Well that is fine if they appreciate what ASC can mean, but useless if they don't understand. Not many companies have people with a working knowledge of autism who can also help the person feel comfortable.

My husband is originally from near London (Sidcup), and, when we were dating, and early in our marriage, we spent a bit of time there. It got to the point where we'd be heading somewhere, and I'd split off from him and go another way, just to avoid crowds and noise. Luckily the public transport there is pretty good, and there's lots of good walking space, unlike around here. Still, pretty cool. I wouldn't mind living in the UK, though not London proper, obviously.
Not having to drive would also make my OCPD spouse more likely to return to work, he just got postal in the rushhour traffic here (not that I'm a fan either).

No joke on the hidden disabilities thing (I have Myasthenia Gravis), I go off on anyone who dares to complain that someone doesn't 'look disabled' when they park in an accessible spot. I never used my placard when I had one, because I was afraid of the harassment, violence and vandalism that people in my support group had reported experiencing on a regular basis (explaining to these aholes that stressing out people with invisible disabilities isn't just rude, it actually makes their symptoms worse, aka makes them sicker and more disabled. Way to go self-righteous prats!).

Anyway, as for having told my current boss to spell things out for me... it was a LONG road to get to that very obvious point. I embarrassed myself and my leadership (manager and director) a few times in the past because I hadn't picked up on cues of what type of information to discuss with people outside of our group (obviously, with the way my mind works, there's only one type of information: facts). My manager was initially too obtuse for me, dropping hints and veiled suggestions. After years of, two days after a meeting with him I'd go 'oh, I'll bet he actually meant X', I finally told him he needs to be really, really blunt with me, because I'm not going to figure stuff out in time otherwise. It took him some time, but, he finally got there.
I worked under that manager for over 13 years, he was new at it when he hired me and learned a lot dealing with me and the engineers... we were a weird group to manage (or not, as necessary).
So, it was really only after suffering through the awkwardness of embarrassing myself and others with cluelessness that I realized I should be proactive about this with my new boss.

My wife's son used to work as a doctor at a hospital in Sidcup.

I think, once you go beyond Zone 2 on the Tube, that most of London is really not that crowded.

Once you get south of the Borough of Lewisham, or Battersea, or other similar areas, Greater London is pretty green.