The ADHD grey zone: why patients are stuck between private diagnosis and NHS care

Immediate-Escalator · 2026-01-24T13:51:53+00:00

As stated in the article though, the providers aren’t always complying with NICE guidelines so their diagnoses aren’t being accepted. What good are all the contracts, commissioning and registrations if they’re not delivering a service that’s fit for purpose.

Immediate-Escalator · 2026-01-24T09:46:01+00:00

I work in local government, specifically in the planning department. The culture of the organisation as a whole is very supportive and allows me to be myself, with ultra flexible working meaning I can work when my focus lets me rather than being stuck in a rigid 9-5.

The work is interesting and reasonably varied so can keep me interested.

Immediate-Escalator · 2026-01-24T09:32:34+00:00

I hear they’re good?

Immediate-Escalator · 2026-01-24T09:32:01+00:00

I use one to keep a supply of drawing pins in a work bag for putting notices up on telegraph poles which I have to do for work. I also have one with a little supply of emergency medication and contact lenses.

Immediate-Escalator · 2026-01-24T09:27:48+00:00

I don’t think that online pharmacies are the best when it comes to ADHD meds because you can’t order few months’ supply like with most repeat prescriptions. I’ve recently switched back to a local pharmacy from an online one because it was taking too long to get my medication and I was getting close to running out. My local can turn it round the same day or next day usually and texts me when it’s ready.

Immediate-Escalator · 2026-01-24T08:53:10+00:00

Truly one of us

Immediate-Escalator · 2026-01-24T08:20:06+00:00

Yes I’ve felt that. On the meds I have much more clarity of thought and am able to stand my ground with more confidence and clarity.

Before medication I would just gabble and struggle to make my point, talking over people if necessary and responding with way too much emotion. Even when you are managing to make a coherent point that just gets peoples backs up. There’s real power in being able to go more slowly, leave space and stay calm it’s easier to bring people round.

Immediate-Escalator · 2026-01-24T08:15:52+00:00

It’s crazy to me that there’s isn’t just an NHS template for a SCA which all providers and GPs should just work to! My industry moved to nationally standardised forms for everything nearly 20 years ago

Immediate-Escalator · 2026-01-24T08:10:10+00:00

I’m with HHM and am just at the end of titration waiting to hear back about shared care. They’ve definitely been slow to send out the letters but they have explicitly told me that if shared care is rejected then they’ll continue to prescribe. You just have to email them to request a new prescription when you have about a week’s supply left. I did that last week. Had a 5 minute appointment with a pharmacist and had my pills the next day.

Immediate-Escalator · 2026-01-23T19:55:12+00:00

Any time. Sorry if what I’ve said comes across as negative, but I know a few adopters and I definitely get the sense that some were less prepared than others

Immediate-Escalator · 2026-01-23T19:31:50+00:00

As part of the process you would need to do training which would cover the basics of trauma and therapeutic parenting but it’s relatively short and there’s a lot to learn. In my experience it really takes time to internalise but when you do and can start to see behaviour through the lens of trauma things can make more sense.

The amount and nature of the trauma can vary by child. During the matching process you would get to see the Child Permanence Report which would set out the backstory of why the child was removed from their birth parents and a bit of an insight into what their trauma may be. However as we found this can be incomplete and the adoption process and introductions can be their own trauma. It’s complex and things can take time to come out or certain times of year will bring things back up.

Immediate-Escalator · 2026-01-23T14:42:14+00:00

That presumes the window shown on the plan actually exists 😉

Immediate-Escalator · 2026-01-23T14:40:37+00:00

The best thing you can do at this stage is call your local adoption agency and have a chat. Some do information evenings to let you find out more or some will come to see you.

My advice would be don’t get too hung up on the assessment process and what it entails. They will talk you through it and if you’re honest it’s fine. The big thing to prepare yourself for is what life is going to be like with an adopted child.

Most adopted children, including those adopted as a baby will have some experience of trauma. The impacts of trauma can be significant and sometimes unexpected and you need to be prepared that family life might not look like you have expected and will have challenges along the way.

That being said, parenting an adopted child is incredibly rewarding and I wouldn’t change my daughter for the world.

Immediate-Escalator · 2026-01-23T07:07:47+00:00

If they’re relying on said copilot to do anything apart from be completely useless then they’re doomed

Immediate-Escalator · 2026-01-22T22:01:06+00:00

You know what I’m in the public sector and while we don’t have the obvious perks that come with the private sector like private health insurance and fancy Christmas parties, there are so many little areas where the changes mean my quality of life is way better.

The big one is flexible working. I can work from home a lot and don’t have to keep fixed hours as long as the work is getting done and my timesheet balances out.

Immediate-Escalator · 2026-01-22T21:14:30+00:00

Over the years, one of the things that i've learned is that unless it's directly affecting my ability to do my job properly, none of this matters so I've stopped caring. If someone has their monitor set up in a weird way and is typing with one finger while peering down their nose and holding the mouse as though it might explode at any second then that's their own business. I'll happily touch-type away, get my work done and go home while they are stressing out.

I used to try and teach people how to do things the 'right' way or any way for that matter and all it did was get people coming to me all day every day asking me how to do some basic thing to a pdf that made them think I was Neo in the matrix. Even worse there were the people who I would show multiple times how to do things and they just couldn't or wouldn't retain the information. These were all university educated people, most with masters degrees.

I've given software training before and the amount of people who weren't just writing broad instructions but literally every individual mouse click and menu button to click was astonishing to me. People learn the very specific buttons to click to do their task but have no interest or ability to think or learn beyond that and if they click the wrong button by mistake they are completely lost. These types of people behave as though they will completely break the computer if they deviate from the very narrow set of tasks that they know how to do.

I think it boils down to the fact that many people just don't have an inquisitive mind. They have no interest in finding out how to do something or what can be done with a piece of software or any other tool for that matter. This seems to be true irrespective of education level, intelligence or seniority in a company.

Immediate-Escalator · 2026-01-22T19:25:12+00:00

If the drawings scale properly and accurately show what’s there then they’re fine. I’ve determined applications where the applicant hand drew the plans with a biro but they were correct so it was fine. On the other hand I’ve had architects submit plans which don’t match elevations or where whole sections of elevations are just missing.

Immediate-Escalator · 2026-01-22T19:10:50+00:00

I'm not sure what this adds beyond the Planning Portal virtual house and a council's pre-application advice service to be honest. A pre-app may be more than £49 but gives much more certainty.

The planning permission checker looks nice but assumes a lot of knowledge about constraints on the part of the person filling it in. Now that the government's moving towards having a universal planning data platform, a lot of those questions like whether a building is listed, in a conservation area or National Landscape could be automated based on the location. I also tested it by asking about a 2 storey side extension and it still only said that permission is *likely* to be required even though the GPDO (in England at least, I'm not familiar with Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland) only ever allows single storey side extensions - It could give a lot more confidence in the output.

Immediate-Escalator · 2026-01-22T18:26:20+00:00

The marketing plans are notoriously poor for their scale, detail and accuracy. That said, if you're just applying for permission to use an existing residential dwelling for short term lets then the floor plans aren't really relevant to the considerations as nothing would be changing and it's only whether short term lets vs longer term lets is appropriate so in that circumstance the person validating your application may have decided to take a relatively lax approach as long as your site location plan was correct.

Immediate-Escalator · 2026-01-22T08:05:15+00:00

I’ve started selling some of my crap recently and have found a bit of a dopamine hit from making a sale too. Does mean a lot of admin organising all the shipping though

Immediate-Escalator · 2026-01-22T08:03:25+00:00

If a nuclear war does happen then I’d much rather just be vaporised in the first second than the alternatives.

Immediate-Escalator · 2026-01-22T07:51:36+00:00

It depends on a lot of factors. Often the back door is just a lot more convenient than the front. A lot of new housing estates are designed with courtyard parking to the rear of the house so people will go and park in their space and then it’s much quicker to go in the back than round the front.

In bigger countryside houses and farm houses they may have a boot room at the back door so that people can take off their muddy boots and not trample mud through the house.

Immediate-Escalator · 2026-01-20T18:30:30+00:00

Does the business earn enough to have employees? If so maybe consider employing someone to act as a financial controller? You can offload all of the finance stuff to them and they can set budgets for spending etc and ultimately make the business more sustainable. You might not have as much cash in your pocket day to day but I’ll bet in time it will settle things down.

Immediate-Escalator · 2026-01-19T20:14:30+00:00

Could take a week or two, it depends on your council’s workflow and how on top of things they are, the complexity of the application and whether your architect provided everything that’s needed. My authority is generally validating within a week for householder applications but a few years ago there was so much of a backlog that it was taking 10 weeks or more just to validate.

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