disability adjustments at work

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Has anyone here got a job where the employer has come up with adjustments to cater for your Asperger or autistic difficulties, and where you are happy with the adjustments?

I've been in my job for 10 years, but last autumn I was off sick with stress for 2 months because I had to cope with my Asperger difficulties on my own. Following that, a manager came up with some degree of support. This was good, but, when I later took advice from a specialist, she thought that the support was still not enough. She advised me to ask the managers to come up with a formal plan of support, designed to make adjustments to my job to cater for my Asperger and autistic difficulties, so that the support I receive is not dependent on the goodwill of one manager.

I have now started the process to try to obtain this long-term formal support. The process has moved forward, and I have obtained a bit more, but it is still moving too slowly: I am now getting to the stage where things are happening at work that are making me very anxious and giving me panic attacks. I may have to take time off with stress again. I am constantly having to chase managers so that they do what was agreed, and, in the meantime, things are happening that I find difficult and for which I am not being supported.

So, how do I get the managers to come up with a suitable plan of support quickly?

It might be best to work with your specialist to suggest some accommodations that would help you. Your boss probably is not a specialist and may have no experience or have a clue what to do. Not their fault.

I worked in a call center once and one of the employees had glasses, so his doctor wrote a note to the office asking if he could have a larger monitor to help him see better and they bought him one.

We've already gone past this stage. I have had a workplace assessment done, and recommendations were made as to what adjustments to make for me. The question is, how do I get managers to implement the report? They're dragging their feet.

Do you have an ADA officer? If they really are dragging, you might have to consider an ADA complaint.

I live in England. I have a life coach who I have contacted. I've also contacted the disabled members' group in my trade union. and a few other organisations that work with disabled people. I'm awaiting the replies.

I looked online and it seems the Equality Act of 2010 is similar to the ADA here in America.

The Equality Act of 2010 requires employers to make reasonable adjustments to the job when the employee is disabled, so that disabled employees are not placed at a disadvantage due to their disability.

How easy are the adjustments to implement?

Hmmm... At face value, the adjustments are not difficult to implement, but the difficulty comes more from the way the organisation is run. The latest workplace assessment report made two main recommendations:
1. that I am officially appointed a mentor - there is a guy who has been mentoring me unofficially, this needs to be formalised; and
2. that every task I do is risk-assessed in light of my Asperger's - the organisation is big, strong on Health & Safety and used to doing risk assessments.

Since the report, a new management structure has come up whereby I am coming under a guy who is a bully and is giving me panic attacks. I am now, with the help of my mentor, trying to get the management structure changed so that I don't come directly under him. This management structure is temporary, but read on.

The difficulty comes from the fact that the organisation is full of petty managers who each wants to do their own thing. There is very weak coordination, plenty of bickering, and most of the managers are not good at their job. This results in "temporary" arrangements that either end up lasting years (over 10 years in some instances) or, on the contrary, keep changing every few weeks. In turn, this means that there is often going to be a need to review the adjustments that are made for me. The situation lends itself to crises.

What I want to get is a formal plan of support that includes all the adjustments that are going to be made, and how they are going to be reviewed regularly. It is going to be difficult to formalise this within the context of the uncertainty I have described, but it needs to be done or, sooner or later, I'll have to take time off sick with stress again. There are also adjustments I have obtained informally, i.e. requiring that a radio not be used in my warehouse, replacing ticking clocks with tickless ones, keeping my job largely separate from my colleagues', and having regular meetings with managers to discuss my Asperger needs. These adjustments need to be included in the formal plan of support, so that I am not vulnerable to losing them.

In short, I have already obtained quite a bit, but I'm still vulnerable because the whole workplace arrangements keep changing and the adjustments haven't been formalised. Having to rely on the goodwill of a few people is not secure enough.

P.S. to my previous post

Even if I obtain the formal plan of support that I need, my fight will have to carry on because people often break the rules at my workplace. I'll have to constantly make sure that what was agreed actually happens. It's not a good place to work in for someone with Asperger's.