Phoned up to make an ESA application today!

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They keep changing the goalposts for ESA. I was on ESA between diagnosis and January this year; apparently I no longer qualify as I have learned to cope with my condition "too well" I'm now on JSA. Fortunately, the DWP staff at my local JCP are very understanding of the limitations that I still have and the DEA there is also my regular DWP adviser and he and the adviser on the work programme that I am on now are doing their best for me.

On that note I have advice for anybody stuck on ESA or JSA who despairs of being employed again due to long career gaps, especially if autism is one of the main underlying reasons. Ask your DWP adviser to refer you to Work Choice, if it is available in your area. If you are already on another work programme, your advisers there may be able to get specialist help from Work Choice.

Work Choice in Suffolk and Norfolk at least is a work programme run by Mencap on behalf of the Shaw Trust; it's specifically for people with LD, Autism and mild-to-medium MH problems. They have a good track record of getting people into work who were considered almost unemployable; where I live, the local JCP staff have a very high opinion of them. Certainly, Mencap were more proactive in helping me in the last two months than the Work Programme providers were in two years.

I just wish the DWP had put me on this programme way back in 2008

I'm not sleeping very well waiting for tomorrow's decicision.

Which will almost inevitably be a negative one.

Oh, don't say that! You don't know. Maybe it will turn out to be all right after all.

Even if you get turned down, you can appeal the decision, I think.

I really regret making this application. It seemed like such a good idea at the time.

My anxiety, since I made the phone call, has been incredibly bad.

I didn't think for one moment that I would be this anxious. I'm upstairs alone & completely losing the plot.

I'm making all sorts of weird growls. It's agony.

The sooner this is over the better.

So it turns out that the text message they sent me, on tuesday, was pointless.

As today I have received a form which I need to return to them with a medical certificate from a GP.

All the text achieved was to confuse me.

Oh dear. Sorry to hear you are so anxious. I completely understand because things like this always make me feel awful as well.

It was definitely a good idea to apply, though. If you don't apply, you have zero chance of being awarded the benefit. If you do apply, you may be awarded it. So hang in there.

Did you manage to get a doctor's appointment or get to speak to the GP on the phone?

I have an appointment to see my GP on the 4th of March.

It always takes weeks to get to see someone.

However, I am going there in the next hour or so to request the required certificate/letter from the GP.

I have no idea how this is going to work though, as I need the certificate/letter a.s.a.p. and can't get to see him.

He doesn't really know about my condition as I haven't had any contact with him since he initially referred me to the local NHS mental health centre.

Nearly a year ago!

I have a large, in-depth report that I would like him to see, ideally.

Well, hopefully he will be able to write you the letter without actually seeing you, but he may not if it has to be an official "sick note."

Does your health centre not have a system of a "drop-in" clinic as well as scheduled appointments? That's the way it works at mine. In the mornings, if you turn up early and wait in a queue, you are given an appointment for that very day on a "first come, first served" basis. Then in the afternoons they revert to the pre-booked appointments system.

It would be worth checking with your health centre whether they operate any sort of system like that, so that you could perhaps get an appointment tomorrow. Not all health centres advertise their drop-in clinics. I didn't even know about mine until I was on the phone trying to get an appointment and was getting very upset because the lady kept telling me they had no appointments that week. When she heard how worried I sounded, she said helpfully: "why don't you just drop in tomorrow morning?" and explained about the drop-in clinic. So hopefully your health centre will have something similar.

If not, explain your situation exactly as you're telling us here. Say you have Asperger's and ADHD and ideally you need to see a doctor ASAP to obtain certain paperwork, but seeing a doctor promptly is proving impossible and for that reason you are experiencing VERY high levels of anxiety and are becoming extremely distressed. If you explain all of that to them, they might just make an exception and squeeze you in earlier.

Either that, or they might send a doctor out to do a house call if you explain you're having a meltdown.

You might not even realise that you might be entitled to home visits. I didn't. I thought home visits were only for people who physically couldn't walk, but they are also for people who can't leave the house for reasons of anxiety. So if you are feeling extremely anxious about going to the health centre in person, you are entitled to phone your health centre and explain you are having a meltdown and can't face going and would like to request that the doctor come to you instead. I think house calls are done on a different system than usual appointments, so if they paid you a home visit you might be able to get an appointment sooner than a few weeks' time.

Tip: at times like this, don't try to politely act "normal" in front of the medical staff. If you're anything like me, you probably try to put on an act of looking "normal" and restrain yourself from stimming or making weird noises in front of other people, and wait until you are alone again to go back to openly having your meltdown. This is a time when it would be useful to drop your act. If you're having a meltdown and making growling noises, just let yourself make those noises at the health centre.

That will hopefully help them to understand that something is seriously wrong and you urgently need help. It doesn't have the same effect if you say "I'm having a meltdown and urgently need to see my doctor" in a faked calm, confident, controlled voice.

They need to know how stressed this is making you. They need to get you to see your doctor NOW. Not two weeks' time.

Hope all goes well.

P.S. It doesn't really matter if the doctor you see doesn't know you well or isn't aware of your condition. The GP who wrote my first note for ESA had never even met me before at all. I just explained the problems I was having in my own words.

Also, at health centres they normally have a few emergency appointments that they release each day. If you manage to convey to them what extreme anxiety and distress you are experiencing, they may allocate you one of those. If they refuse because you look physically OK, just keep insisting that it's a medical emergency on the grounds of mental health. They are supposed to treat mental health with equal importance as physical health (although they don't normally).

Edit again: sorry for writing too much and sorry again if any of my advice turns out to be inaccurate, but I'm just trying to help the poor OP because I've been in situations like this myself and I know how awful it is when there is nobody there to help you or tell you what to do. Hopefully some other people will come along soon to this thread to give additional advice. {{{{{hugs for OP}}}}}}

I am going down there right now armed with all of the advice from this thread.

GULP!! !!

ps: I always act "normal" in public, I can't help it.

Which advice exactly?

The home appointment, the emergency appointment, or the drop-in appointment?

I hope it all gets sorted now and you can start to feel better...

Oh sorry.

I went down there and just told one of the women on reception the problem. I then showed her the letter from Jobcentreplus and then asked her if she could also show the doctor my mental health report.

She then photocopied everything, ( which I was't expecting ) gave me the originals back, & told me that she would pass the documents on to the doctor.

But your post persuaded me to just go directly to the reception desk & tell the woman exactly what I needed. My original plan was to write a letter explaining what I needed, addressed to the doctor, and just slip it under his office door & hope for the best.

Which would've been a gamble.

But I didn't ask the woman what I'm supposed to do next. Do they phone me? Do I just go back there and ask if it has been done, and if I can have it?

I just don't know.

I suggest that, since you don't know, you should phone the health centre in the morning and ask them what happens next. Then you will know what to expect, and can stop worrying.

Depending on if it's a sick note written on the doctor's special form, or an actual letter printed on A4 paper, the doctor may give it to you for you to send to the DWP yourself, or may send it to the DWP himself directly. I don't really know how the system works at your health centre, but I'm sure the receptionist will know and will be able to tell you over the phone.

Edit: by the way, I'm not sure if sticking a letter directly under his door would have been a good idea, but it's true that you can write to your GP. I wrote to mine recently when I was going through terrible insomnia and was asleep during office hours so could never phone the health centre. I wrote her a letter and went and put it in the health centre letter box at night to explain that my PTSD and insomnia were really bad.

She wrote back to me on two occasions. So doctors do check their mail. They have quite a lot of paperwork to do as well as just seeing patients, and they are used to getting letters and having to write them back.

They're also used to having to write letters to the benefits office. I don't think they are even the ones that write the letters. I don't think they have time. I think a secretary types them and the doctor just signs them. I know this because one day a GP was meant to write my ESA letter but he got it wrong and typed that I had ADHD instead of Asperger's, and I complained about the mistake and was told that the "typist" must have made a mistake and would re-do the letter. The reference to the "typist" made me realise that it wasn't even my doctor who wrote the letter. It was a typist.

My point is that maybe all of your paperwork will have been passed on to a typist by the receptionist. Maybe the typist will now type you a letter using a template and then your doctor will check it and sign it. Presumably that is how it will work. But I don't know if you will have to go and collect it. Probably you will. Usually when they do my letters they are left for me at reception and I have to go and get them.

But all of this will depend upon whether it's an actual letter that you need, or a sick note. If it's a sick note, the doctor himself will have to write it by hand, I think.

Anyway I am not sure if my experiences will be exactly applicable to your situation, but I just thought it would be helpful to explain what little I know about the system of paperwork, because it always helps you to calm down if you know more or less what's going on.

I suspect your health centre is better than mine, going by what you've written in the previous few posts.

I'm less anxious tonight than the previous few days, thankfully.

I'll drive back over there tomorrow afternoon and ask them about the letter situation.