Earlier this afternoon, I checked my phone and noticed a missed call from a couple of hours previously. Having googled the number as I usually do, I was excited to see that it wasn’t spam, but a number belonging to the organisation I had interviewed with last Friday. A familiar voice answered, promising to call back after their meeting was finished. I had a good feeling about this one.
When the call came, I was quickly humbled. I find you can always tell, even before they say anything, if you’ve got the job or not. It’s the tone they use, slightly apologetic, a bit awkward and uncomfortable, probably leading with some kind of small talk to cushion the blow, and then it comes. They appreciated my interest but this time, they said, they didn’t have good news.
As a stand-alone event this is bad enough. The tragedy is when the cycle is repeated. This is the reality forced upon autistic people like me, as well as disabled people in general. Words can barely express just how hard this is: the meticulous search for jobs that sound like they might just about be manageable for you, the moral and practical dilemma as to whether you should declare your disability when applying, the effort of the application itself and then the anxiety of having to face another interview, all the while dealing with the usual day-to-day trials of your disabilities.
This final stage of a job application seems almost comically biased against you if you’re disabled, especially if you’re neurodivergent. An interview is a bizarre social ritual, a trial of the fittest, or more accurately, a trial of the normal, the expected, the acceptable. Everyone knows, from years of parental advice and career advisor sessions, that you have to ‘read between the lines,’ and decipher what the question is really asking you. This, while you’re probably in an unfamiliar room with one or more strange faces honed in on you, evaluating your level of eye contact, body language or tone of voice. It would be too conspiratorial for my tastes to think that employers deliberately plan their recruitment process so as to be exponentially more challenging to disabled people, but it certainly does feel that way sometimes, and sometimes the ignorance, lack of reflection and understanding that this is what they’re doing feels just as bad. Certainly, many of these interviewers are perfectly nice people who consider themselves kind and inclusive, and are probably not making these judgments intentionally or even consciously, but ideas of ‘normal’ are so deeply entrenched and awareness of disability so low that the effect is often the same.
It is no wonder, then, that so many people like me are unemployed. Estimates vary, but some estimate that only 22% of autistic adults are in paid work, despite many of us wanting to. This is even higher than the national average for disabled adults generally, itself a figure pointing towards a crisis often labelled the ’employment gap’. The void left by this employment gap is acutely and heart-wrenchingly felt by those of us job-hunting with disabilities. It’s often a source of despair, hopelessness or low self-esteem, and often quite a touchy subject, related to a wide and complex myriad of other personal issues. It can be hard not to take rejection from interviews as a rejection by the wider community in general.
What feels like piling yet another boulder onto the camel’s back, however, is when the government turns against us too. The government’s proposed cuts to disability benefits such as PIP, which covers the extra costs faced by disabled people in everyday life regardless of employment status, are already damaging the mental health of disabled people. For people battling to maintain hope, this extra blow feels punitive and unjust.
The proposal to narrow the eligibility criteria for PIP (which seeks to cover the additional costs faced by disabled people and is not tied to employment) has been roundly condemned by disability organisations, with many coming out with strong words to express its counter-productiveness. The odd politician has even spoken out about it, although most discontent seems to be behind closed doors and treated as borderline treason by the government, as an impediment to their quest to represent ‘the taxpayer’ and ‘working people,’ cynically contrasted against disabled people as if the two groups do not overlap.
Just in case you thought you could escape by not watching the news, you quickly find that this announcement has catapulted this deeply personal issue into national consciousness and the everyday conversation of millions, and escape is difficult.
It is this environment of demonisation we are forced to live in while awaiting the impending cuts themselves. The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Poverty and Inequality has estimated that this will impact over 800,000 individuals. The DWP themselves estimate that over 3 million families will be impacted, with some standing to lose staggering sums close to £10,000 a year. Disabled individuals and advocacy organisations persist in the sisyphean task of raising the alarm, that the victims of these cuts are already among the poorest of society and that it completely contradicts the government’s promises on improving mental health and fighting poverty. We have yet to see what heed will be taken of these warnings, as the government seems intent on driving on with the proposed cuts.
For me, on days like today where I’m forced to pick myself back up again after yet another rejection, all of these issues are even more vivid than usual. Especially with the political context we’re in. I’m compelled to re-evaluate just how much hope I can have as a disabled person in this country.
Iwan is a native Welsh speaker from the Caernarfon area. Having been diagnosed with autism and ADHD in his early twenties, he volunteers for local groups and campaigns around disability issues. You can get in touch with him via email. You can get in touch with him via email.
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