I had my first paid job in social care 11 years ago after losing my job as an engineer. I enjoyed working with liked minded people who were deaf and had other impairments. My sign language skills are not great due to my own Cerebral Palsy but I was able to make myself understood by most people, some people even thought I was profoundly deaf because of my style of signing. I left that job after 3 years because of differences between myself and my manager, I should have stuck it out but she was making it very impossible for me to do my job and standing up for the rights of disabled people. The real question comes is why did I return to social care work 2 years ago when I knew that I was not accepted within that field of work in the first place? You maybe thinking the same as me, not all companies are the same. It did seem like this when I joined my current job. I even told them why I left the last job in social care, they agreed and said “oh we don’t work like that, we are much more client centred” this sentence is the biggest load of bull shit I have ever heard in my life. A few times I have seen it work within my job over the last 2 years but more or often its just how can we get the service user to do what we want to do. it goes against everything I believe forcing a person to do what they don’t want to do. this has lead me into a few mistakes. One primary one really. that was allowing a service user to go out without his walking aid. I not going to go into details but it is this which now my employer is using against me. They are saying I am mentally unable to make choices and will willingly put myself and others at risk by going out the house and trying to do a job I am unable to do. After telling my employer about this incident I really wished they did go through the disciplinary process but they did not feel at the time for some reason the need too, however ever since have been bashing me over the head with it.

My employer seem to have it in there head that I am reckless and have no regard for my safety and the safety of those around me, this is more so the case when it comes to my safety. I have a good awareness of my abilities and sometimes I will go into work without my walking sticks because I feel that they disabled me in other ways and when I don’t need them why carry them? This translates to my employer I am putting myself at risk. I am more than able to walk and I DON’T need to use my wheelchair unless I have totally over done it and want to rule out every chance of falling over. Before anyone say’s “why can’t I do my job from a wheelchair?” I just can’t ok, there are just some jobs that are impossible to do and this is one of them. OK it could be possible but it would require a serious amount of support from my employer, something they are clearly not able to do. I have taken ever step to take control of my own health and safety within work but they will not let me. I am really close to just giving up. My relationship with my managers is very weak and they are very aggressive towards me.

Last week I got really fed up being off work now for 4 months I launched a grievance with my employer. There where 3 points within the Grievance.

Here are the short versions of my grievance

1 ) After taking 2 days off sick to get over the disappointment of losing my flying scholarship as well re-build up my energy levels is not unreasonable request and I should not have to get a doctors certificate to say that my depression and that my medication is not making it unsafe for me to drive..

2) that I should not be asked to obtain a sickness note from my doctor until an OT assessment is carried out to prove whether or not my disability is making me ill. In short I am disabled not sick.

3) It is unfair to ask me to return to work on my first day without any transition back to work also for an OT assessment to be carried out on the same day on reduced pay.

On all 3 accounts my employer feels they are unjustified. My solicitor has said it would be hard for me to appeal against  the first 2, but I am likely to be able to appeal against the 3^rd. what is really strange is even though they feel that I was unjustified to launch this grievance on point 3 they have said they will allow me to return to work on a transition period on full pay as a good will jester.

Where does this leave me now? I can hardly appeal against the 3^rd point of my grievance if they have backed down. What does puzzle me is why are they making me feel like the bad person for launching an unjustified grievance, and then backing down later in the report?

I also have the outstanding issue they do not trust me to work with service users. They haven’t set a date for me to return and I have no idea just how this OT assessment is going to work. What I find a little ironic is that this all started from now a distant memory of not achieving a flying scholarship and now I have ended up more depressed by the situation.

There is one thing I have learnt by this process honestly is NOT the best policy. I really wish I haven’t told either my doctor or my employer how I felt about how much the flying scholarship meant to me. What I am also likely to do is never to tell them just how much my disability can effect me. Reason for this is that I can’t see just how by telling them it has helped me? My depression is much worse than it was, I have very little confidence I will be able to convince my employer I can do this job safely now. What I don’t really want to do is move and have to start all over again. I did that when I took a break from social care last time and moved to Nottingham, we all know just how much that helped my career, zero! The only thing I got from going to Nottingham was the friends I made, which was worth it I guess but do I want to do that again? I go back to my earlier statement, “am I giving up too easy?”