 One thing that seems to come up for me a lot, and just by looking at a lot of the programs that are out there, the level of support for transitioning to adulthood is very, very limited. We could talk about how limited the education systems can be in supporting autistic people, the actual transition period, usually about 18 to 25, very, very limited. There are a lot of schemes and stuff in the UK which particularly target that group, but there's pretty much zip for anything outside of that age range. And it leaves a lot of people, as you said before, falling through the cracks where you don't have that support with moving out, developing a social group, developing independence, living on your own, those kind of things. It's not something that's necessarily taught in school or guided after you finish those. And especially in your case, you know, not having autism diagnosis. I imagine that that's even more difficult. But in terms of independence, what has been your experience with trying to attain that? Have you come across any hurdles? Yeah, I mean, I've never felt like I've been competent to do things by myself. And you mentioned, for instance, driving. I haven't learned how to drive. Sure. But stuff like living by myself has been a struggle because I haven't had a job to financially support living by myself. And I've been given no support financially as well. Because again, I fall out of that. I fall through the cracks of what I'm entitled to. So I can get personal independence payment, but that's it. I'm not entitled to anything else because I have a savings account. So you have to waste your savings account in order to be able to get benefits, which is kind of goes completely against the whole point of saving up really, and a savings account, essentially. I mean, they're asking you to save money. But then at the same time, they're not willing to give you support in order to save money. They want you to waste money so that you can rely on them for benefit. It's as soon as I started to put myself in a situation where I was looking for a place to live. It's been one hurdle after another trying to get support based on my neurodiversity. And it's complete nightmare. And I've kind of I've got casework on it, but I've kind of left it to her because I can't manage that myself anymore because I'm concentrating on trying to get a job. Yeah. And even that, I'm getting help now trying to apply for a job because applying for a job would give me independence as well. But the problem of applying for a job is that I again, in terms of employment, I've fallen through the cracks. And you spoken about how people who left school or university have not had the kind of the tools or the support needed to be able to progress into adulthood. Well, when I left university, that my prospects were I thought my prospects were pretty good for I thought I was going to do okay. But as soon as I saw myself within the same job as everyone else, I suddenly realized that I was I was small fish, you know, I was not going to get any support that I regardless if I had dyslexia or not. Sure. What my degree level did not mean anything to to to to basically getting a job in film and television or film reviewing for magazines or stuff like that. They were happy companies were happy for me to work for free. Sure. But but they weren't willing to pay me. Right. And they're kind of shuttling down you the volunteer routes. There have been many temporary roles, unpaid temporary roles or paid temporary roles, where I would have liked to have been developed as an individual. Because those are jobs that I actually really enjoyed doing. But the thing is I was never given I was never given any development support. I was never developed it might none of any none of my possible talent was nurtured. So I've kind of gone through life stumbling from one job to another trying to make a career of myself. And as a result, I don't have a career. Because I had I got horrible anxiety issues, which has affected me and made made me have debilitating symptoms of anxiety. So getting up in the morning and doing things have been difficult for me, depending on how bad I have anxiety issues relate to that a lot. Yeah. And and because of the COVID lockdown, and then trying to get in back into work after COVID lockdown, it's been a big complete nightmare. And you'd think that with my CV and what I have on my CV, that it would be enough experience for me to be able to get sort of a novice role within a company. But it's not it's, I'm back at square one again. I've not been given the kind of support that I should be getting in career development. Do you mind me asking you a little bit about like your parents perspective on kind of the independence aspect of it? Have you had much like feedback feedback from them? Do they do they have any kind of worries about that aspect? Or my parents have great worries about me. They don't understand the nature of my neurodiversity, my autism, my dyslexia. They're generally worried for me. And they're in a lot of they suffer quite a lot because of that. For me, it's disconcerting that I can't that I can't like, give my parents the kind of the kind of relaxation they need in terms of not having to worry about me. But it's it's, it's there's a lot of pressure on me. And I think a lot of the anxiety issues that I've had have come from the pressure I've received from my parents in terms of trying to trying to make something for myself, so that I can be independent, whether it's a job or anything else like that. I've in terms of employment, it's been an incredibly difficult issue where I've tried to go for jobs. And even with my CV, you think I have a lot of experience, but it hasn't meant really anything to an employer. And they look at my is that because I know I from experience a lot of the things that autistic people that I've taught to tend to struggle with is like the interview process, particularly when like applying for jobs. Well, it's not the interview process that's been my stumble. It's actually getting an interview based on my application. My application has been the big problem. My application gets ignored completely. I've been told by someone at Job Center plus that who deals with neurodiversity actually, and she told me that I should not be applying for jobs by myself. And that's why I've been getting help trying to apply for jobs, because the way I interpret questions, the way I respond to questions is not is obviously not working for them, because I don't even get an interview for a job. And these are jobs that I could be really good for like these are jobs that I'm suitable for. I've got a huge amount of experience as an archive assistant. But I can't get those types of types of jobs because I just I apply in a way that they don't understand that they don't say it doesn't interest them in some way. And that's confusing for me, because like, if you have the requirements for a particular job, it's within reasonable adjustments within like the law that you should be offered an interview. Well, they say if you have the requirements, but if you meet the requirements, sure. But they may say that somehow you don't meet the requirements. And then that is seen by them as a good excuse not to have me come in for an interview or something like that. If they look at my CV, clearly they can see that I have enough experience for it. Yeah. And you should be offered a job if you have the experience for it, which is but based on based on offered a job offered an interview, at least based off the application, I'm not getting an interview. And that's the main problem. I mean, we can go through the conspiracy route, but I don't I don't have any data. I don't have any I don't have enough kind of evidence to suggest that it's a blacklisting thing or or for some reason, it's because I am neurodiverse or you know, one thing that seems clear to me now, having applied for so many jobs over the years, is that there is disability confident. And there's a disability confident website where it has a whole list of companies that have disability confident next to them. And as they can support people with disabilities kind of thing. That's right. That's right. So they they they don't. I think very few of these actually are disability confident. I think it's I think they see it as a label. The companies when they put disability confident onto their website or whatever, I think that they see it just as a kind of a label to say that they're disability confident. I don't think they really are because there's in my experience applying for jobs, I haven't had any interviews for jobs or anything like that. It's a shame because again, it is a job I could be going for. But there's so much competition, but why am I not the competition, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I yeah, I'm sorry. You go first. You go first. You go first. I think that there is definitely some, like particularly because you've applied for jobs and you haven't been offered an interview and you have have the skills and you have the like the evidence for that. Like they should be they should be offering you an interview at the very least because you know, it is something that is kind of mandated by reasonable adjustments and I would say that in a lot of those cases, perhaps approaching like an advocacy organization who would be able to advocate for you in those circumstances, then that would be like the probably the ideal situation. I know that with particularly with application processes, interviews, things like that, it's very often quite unspecific the questions that they ask like they don't ask you very specific questions that they're like, Oh, tell me about this. And I'm like, Oh, okay. What about this? About this? Or, you know, how do you want me to communicate this information that you want from me? And I find that even with things like exams and stuff at university, you know, the questions are they're not clear enough. And you know, I think, you know, perhaps if if organizations were a bit more clear with the language around the questions that you use, and they provided some detail about how they want you to answer them, then it would be a lot better. There was a company that I applied for. It was a archive assistant. It's a well known online company. It was from an archive assistant and I applied for it. I and I did my I did my CV. I did a covering letter and the covering letter gave a lot of good information that they needed. And they say on their website, if you need reasonable adjustments, if you need us to contact you about what is going to be put in your application, please contact us and we will contact you back to talk about your application to you before as it's being submitted as a sure if you're if you fall within the disability bracket, you know, so I did that and they were nice enough to come back to me and they were nice enough to talk me through my application. And I thought, Hey, this is great. I mean, I can't fail here to get an interview because they're actually helping me go for the go for the role. Essentially, they're going to ask me further questions to add to and the answers I'm going to give are going to add to that application. So this is this is terrific. And so they did that. And I didn't get the interview. And I thought so even with their help, I still didn't get the interview. So what's going on? Well, they actually did provide feedback because I'm neurodiverse. They actually did offer feedback. And their feedback was very, very strange as to why I didn't get to interview process. They gave me the excuse that there's a lot of competition. Okay, fine. Why with my experience, why did I still not be the competition? But the other thing was a lot it. Their feedback seemed to be mostly nitpicking, real, real nitpicking so that trying to give me reasons why I didn't get an interview. But stuff that stuff that I forgot to include in my application that I wouldn't think to include unless they asked you. Yeah, I mean, I mean, really silly stuff, Thomas, like really silly stuff. Like, are you aware? Like, how would you in a workplace, how would you promote it? And I'm like, but that for an archive role, like archive assistant role, why would I want to promote it to my fellow colleagues? Like, I don't understand why would I I don't understand that one. The other one was, you didn't show that you were aware of diversity in the workplace. It does. It seems very, very random, like extremely random, particularly a lot of perhaps organizations use like other means to give give evidence for why they don't hire someone or why they why they let people go. And they tend to be very, like, as you said, kind of weird and off off topic and a bit nitpicky, because I think a lot of people they they don't like they see they see the the needs that that we have in terms of sort of fitting into the the workplace and that they don't want to say that it's because we're autistic or because we're disabled because that's against the law that's discrimination. So I think, you know, particularly for individuals, which, you know, there's quite a lot of people who might struggle with like the social atmosphere, the social inner workings of the organization, you know, not fit not being a good fit for the team, that kind of spiel that they can give. That can that can really harm us because we're although we have the actual technical skills and experience, they don't hire us because they don't think we'll get along along with the social environment, which is funny because that's kind of what you need to do when you are including someone who is different in an organization. Yeah. And can you imagine if those were the excuses as to why I didn't get previous interviews? I mean, I've applied for so, so many roles over the years. I can't keep track of how many roles I've applied for. Some of them have been kind of half asked, kind of like, you know, like, I've applied for the roles, I think, well, if I get it, I get it, if I don't, I don't. And then there are roles I've really, really wanted and I've put huge amounts of time and effort into applying for and I didn't even get an interview. And I mean, I don't understand, yes, it's, it's really bizarre and crazy to me. Have you had any experience with paid employment like? Oh, yeah, yeah, I've had, so I've had a lot of temp roles in employment and I've had a permanent role. I worked for, I worked for a telecommunications company for six years. I started off as a temp there and I worked there for six years, but I did not really enjoy it. Like I could do the job, the job was fine. But did you have any, any issues within the job? Or yeah, because I know that there is aspects of like the social things and perhaps things around communication and clarity of instruction that can be quite difficult. And also like the sensory aspect of things and the social aspects of, you know, perhaps customer service related jobs where you have to talk to the general public. Well, the more heightened my anxiety is the more sensory sensitive I can be. So I get distracted very easily under pressure. Yeah, I get very, I get distracted very easily under pressure. And I didn't get along with the people there naturally. I was seen as the odd one out. I was seen as a bizarre guy, the loner, the weirdo, whatever. Because social discrimination and exclusion then. Yeah. And my bosses, I had two different bosses. And they were actually all right to me in certain ways, but they didn't know I was diagnosed with autism at the time. And either did I. So they knew I was dyslexic. That's fine. But they, they, they, maybe they would have treated me a bit differently if they'd known that I was autistic. But yeah, I didn't, the thing is I'm doing a job that's very repetitive. And it's not in a field. It's not in a sector that I've really wanted to work in. And I was going all the way to Stevenage to work in this role. And what kind of commute is that? It's one and a half hours away. One and a half hours. One and a half hours away. So taking a tube, then the rail. Wow. So it's one of one and a half hours. That's an added stress. Like that's, that's three hours, three hours in total. That's three hours in total. So I'd come, I'd get home like about 738 o'clock. Yeah. For dinner. And so, and I have to be at like nine o'clock each day. So, so, so it was, it was, and, and again, I already had anxiety issues by this point. So every day waking up and going to Stevenage, like rushing to get to the platform on time. Because the trains, the rail, the rail trains only come like every half an hour. So if you miss that, if you miss that train, you're going to be half an hour late. So it's just complete nightmare. I mean, some of the people, they were nice. But on the whole, everyone did not understand me because they didn't know I was autistic. And as a human being, I was not respected. I'm, if you think about it, I'm in a role doing work that is not what I'm most interested in doing. And I'm not being praised for it. So it's like, I would get very depressed sometimes when I was going to work that I was going to be doing this for the rest of my life. Eventually, they made me redundant. So And why did, why did that happen? Oh, well, they moved all of the work to India because it's cheaper. Right. Okay. Okay. I could have got a job working. Did they give you a good reference and stuff like? Well, if they've given me a good reference, I haven't seen it because obviously, you know, when you go for interviews, I would need to get an interview to go get a reference. So they're down for everything. One of them is one of them is at least down for a reference, but we haven't had to use them yet. So, you know, really, so yeah, unfortunately, it's been, it's been kind of crazy, but there have been roles I've really like jobs that where I've worked for a brief period of time where I've either had temporary paid work or non paid work where I've really wanted to work. And I haven't been allowed to develop. And because I've been stumbling from one job to another, I've kind of fallen through the cracks of employment. Yeah. Yeah. Have you been in touch with any organizations which are kind of supporting you to develop that kind of path through things and I've had work coaches. But the problem is I've all the work coaches I've had have been very general work coaches. Their level of help has been has not been successful and can be getting any interviews or anything like this. So I've been I went through one organization recently. And it was I was in terms of it was a bit disorganized. I have to say the guy was really nice to me. But I have to have to say that the guy the guy that I was speaking to my work coach, he was so disorganized setting up and being aware of how to use the computer, that I ended up spending half of the time lecturing him and tutoring him on how to use web pages and stuff like that. Jesus, which is not what you want from a work coach. I should be coaching them. Well, it's been I wouldn't say good, but it's been very informative to hear about your experience. And I feel like a lot of people who are listening probably identify with a lot of the things that you're saying, especially late diagnosed individuals, you know, live living and working. Now it is it's not the best. And even if you do manage to get the what do you say the the minimum adjustments and the the the interviews that are enforced for people who have the qualifications for it. It's it's still not an ideal for a lot of autistic people.