I'm so depressed I can't even cry anymore.......

CFC

You have the hearing rescheduled, hopefully you will be able to arrange union attendance.

So what is the actual problem you want advice on, we're waiting to to help but employment forum isn't a huggy support thread place if that's what you're wanting

SarEl

It does strike me that this isn't a straight forward situation and that whilst I can see the OP's side in some things I can equally see the managers point of view. And I think the OP has to also bear in mind that her depression may be influencing the way that she is interpreting some of these things, so we have to be careful to distill facts from beliefs - and that is something that is hard to do on a website where there is only one version of events.

It does appear that since the OP has a disability, some allowance needs to be made for that. But at the same time, I am struggling to distill very many things that the manager has actually done wrong. The manager is correct - sickness absence should not be notified or updated by text message. The manager is also correct that HR are responsible for the sickness absence process - they issue the letters, and they notify managers of when trigger points are reached within the policy and they need to implement the policy stages. And these polkicies leave little room for managers to vary the outcomes - if you trigger the process then the outcome has to involve reducing sickness absence, and this is true whether or not you have a disability (although some of this sickness appears to be unrelated to the disability anyway). And whatever the reason, if you interrupt a manager when they happen to be busy doing something else then you cannot in all fairness expect them to drop everything and deal with you or the Section Leader - it was equally open to the Section leader to ask if she could have a word when the Team Leader had some time!

I am not saying this to be unsypathetic, but the OP needs to understand that sickness absence policies are sickness absence policies. Employers expect employees to be in work, and whilst it is unfortunate if someone has a bad run of illness and cannot attend work through no fault of their own, employers are not social workers - they want employees at work and that is all they are interested in. Being realistic, a high level of sickness combined with frequent medical appointments, sometimes at short notice is going to leave any manager seriously concerned about staffing levels and when exactly an employee is actually going to be in work. Especially when you consdier that managers in the public sector are now routinely appriased on their staffs absence levels!

It seems to me that a whole range of the OP's compliants are actually about the manager doing their job. The OP may not like the results, but I am afraid that these are not valid things to be complaining about. So it may be useful for the OP to sit down and work out what exactly she is complaining about which is valid, and not get everything mixed up into one hotch-potch of "I don't think it's fair". Because a lot of what the OP has complained about may not be fair in her opinion - but it's fair in law and it's fair in relation to the employers policies.

Gingernutty

I suppose my complaint is the haphazard way this has been done.

Yes, a text message isn't normally acceptable but I was in a hospital A&E department, trying to keep people updated in an office which has no voicemail. The Team Leader gave everyone her 'work' mobile number for just such an occasion.

This wasn't one text "Hi! Had fab w/e feeling rlly rough lol c u 2moro " this was a series of texts giving as much detail as possible from 02:33 - 05:14.

There seems to have been no communication between HR, my Team Leader and my new Section Leader.

I'm supposed to have had a letter and a formal review after the breach - after checking, the sick day was in August - the review invitation would/should have been sent in September after the August timesheets had been analysed.

My TL had conducted the 1st formal review (where she steamrollered me), knew I'd been off sick again and that there had to be a second formal interview which hadn't been done (as we were still short staffed in September she would have been the one to do it).

The letter I received Thursday evening (and later, Friday morning), signed by my newly appointed Section Leader (who, presumably, is taking instruction from the Team Leader), refers to a formal invitation I never received for a review which my Team Leader knows hasn't been done and which I think might be the one I'm being invited to on Thursday. If that makes any sense.

The letter doesn't refer to the breach by date so it could be August's or it could be the diarrhoea from last week.

The breach in August was a direct result of my disability and its treatment - the psychiatrist and I were trying a new antidepressant - that worked a treat. Not.

Our Sickness Policy has a letter template which both the Team and Section Leaders have ignored when writing to me and if I can't get a Union Rep to come to a meeting with me on Thursday I am at a loss as to know what to do.

There is even a paragraph stating that if a formal sickness review has to be rearranged it must be within 5 working days of the original meeting. I can't get out of Thursday's meeting now I've agreed to it.


I'm doing everthing that I can to minimize disruption when booking appointments, I've made up all the hours that I had to take off for appointments, my asthma treatment regime has been modified in preparation for winter, I've had a steroid injection in my heel, I'm wearing orthotic insoles and some of the clumpiest 'Frankenstien's monster' shoes going. I'm doing my best here.

As far as I can understand it, this meeting on Thursday is for the breach in August - but I could be wrong.

What are my rights?

SarEl

You are aproaching this in the wrong way. This isn't about your rights. Don't get me wrong - I am not saying that you don't have any, but there really is a large part of this that is down to you. You need to understand that the sickness absence policy will operate whether or not you have a disability. There is no get out clause. The employer may as a result of a disability discount some of the directly related absence. And you need to ask for this - you need to be explaining the circumstances and asking for allowances to be made. The employer doesn't just pick and choose - they operate their policy equally and even-handedly with everyone. But that was one occasion in August. It would appear that the rest of the sickness is not related. You are arguing angels dancing on piunheads about formal templates etc - the point here is your levels of sickness absence. You are taking personally what is not personal - it is the employers policy and a requirement on the managers to implement it. You claim that the Section Leader is taking instruction from the Team Leader - well yes, she is. Of course she is - that is her job and it is her job also to implement the employers policy.

I am sorry that you are struggling with your health, but none of this is personal. You need to stop treating it that way. Where your absence relates directly to your disability then you need to say so and ask the employer to make some reaosnable adjustment to compensate for this. But at the same time you really don't have much of an argument on the rest of it. Yr isn't about genuine sickness or not - it is simply about levels of sickness that are unacceptable to the employer. And it is the employer who decides this - not the Team Leader.

Your rights are your rights under the policy - so you need to read it and understand it. You may get some allowance for illness relating to disability - but that is not automatic and it is not guaranteed. It depends on the extent to which the service can manage the reduced capacity caused by your sickness absence level. You need to stop and realise - you are a trainee who has had substantial amounts of yime off sick and requires regular and frequent time off for medical appointments. There is a point at which the employer cannot sustain this pattern, disability or not.

Gingernutty

Monday I got a reply from HR. They sent my Section Leader and me copies of the letters that they sent to me in 'September' as attachments in an email in a format that we couldn't read.

.snp, anyone?

So we replied and they converted the attachments into .pdf documents which we realised were dated October. The letters that were not received in September were actually not received in October. That didn't help the confusion.

The Section Leader was totally phased as the Team Leader didn't show up for work and TEXTED IN SICK. For. The. Entire. Week. :mad:

After the display at the compulsory meeting on Friday, TL missed a big HOD meeting with some of the Directors on Monday, a big shouty meeting regarding the work we do on Wednesday (earwigging that while they shouted at each other with the door wide open was comedy gold) and a major change of policy following the meeting. And she missed the usual end of month shenanigans, the strike, the compulsory training she'd set up for us all and the moment a set of free standing shelves, overloaded with notes pitched forward narrowly missing one of our staff.

The TL's mother also works here and was nonplussed to find her daughter wasn't at work. Later on in the week she was ringing us up for alternative numbers as her daughter seemed to be incommunicado.

So. I was stressing about this stupid meeting, my obvious stressing wound my SL up who was also stressing and her stressing wound me up and now she was without back up until an HR bod stepped into the breach but it wasn't the HR bod who SL had been in contact with so that stressed her even further.

My union rep was a complete stranger who doesn't work on our site and I only met her an hour and a half before the meeting, creating more stress as she had to be filled in from the beginning.

So by the time all four of us sat down (in a different room to the one scheduled - a last minute change which caused even further stress) we were two little bundles of stress in a maelstrom of stress in a really stress filled week.

And do you know, it wasn't too bad. They explained stuff, I explained stuff - my problems, the treatments, the side effects and how I'm trying to adjust, how the last year has been extremely rough and how this isn't a usual year - HR were happy to refer me on to Occupational Health and see if I was suitable for various courses (courses? No one mentioned courses before) and my union rep was a great support.

SL and I walked out of there mightily relieved. She'd acquired a stonking headache and I was just relieved it wasn't a re-run of the last meeting with TL.

TL's card is marked as far as her boss is concerned, there is help and advice available for me (that really is news to me), my SL is a sweetheart who thinks quite highly of me (:)) and there will be a review in 3 months and again in another 3 months. Not six. :cool:

I still hate my life in general, can't stand my job and can't find another one, am up to my eyeballs in weight, money, family issues, house repairs and commuting hassles but still, one thing at a time.

Emmzi

Occ Health referal is good news!

I am glad it is not as bad as you were expecting. And yes, one thing at a time.

Gingernutty

Due to annual leave commitments, my team is short staffed at the moment.

I needed a doctor's appointment. My GPs' practice has recently upgraded its software making booking an appointment a pain in the proverbial.

If I ring up in the morning, then I can book an appointment for that day, but I can't book an appointment for next week. The quote I keep getting is "There are no slots available".

So. The surgery opens for phone appointments at 08:30. I have to start my journey to work at about 07:45. This means I either take the day off work to make and attend a doctor's appointment or get into work early, call at 08:30 and impress upon the receptionist that I really can't make it back in time for a morning appointment.

So yesterday, in the middle of an open plan office, I try to tell my Section Leader about this and that I will have to work a short day today.

Why? she asked. When I explained again, she asked why I can't get my medication on repeats. After all, she can. So why can't I? After all, nearly everyone she knows can get repeat prescriptions, it shouldn't be too much trouble for me, should it?

I waited a short pause, then when it became clear she didn't realise the problem, I told her (in front of a lunch time audience) that as I was suicidally depressed, my doctor won't let me have anything on repeat, let alone something as dangerous as the antidepressants I'm on. There were little tears in my eyes at that point.

She agreed to me coming in early and leaving early once I'd got an appointment but to tell her straight away what time it would be.

So today, I came in at 07:50, rang at 08:30, got a 17:10 appointment, left at 15:00 and only just made it in time. I've worked a little extra already, so I'm still 20 minutes up on the month so far.

The GP, who rarely meets anyone as depressed as me who's still working, told me that I am doing really well - even after I told him that I had to give my bottle of rum away to the bottle stall at the practice fund raising fete because I was too tempted to use it.

Nope. He reckons I'm doing really well.

Ambersuccubus

You're doing well because you can still analyse your own actions and take preventative measures when necessary. Don't underestimate your left-brain analytical skills in protecting you from harm caused by the emotional rollercoaster of depression.

Gingernutty

I've passed an exam. An internally set exam which our TL hopes will convince her ILM to fund us all for our external 'industry' exams in March.

We are all going to the big exam!

This was after a quick discussion when TL, SL and I were squished into a tiny reading room and I was asked if the 'extra' exam stress (of March, not the exam just gone) would be too much.

I said it wasn't going to be too stressful. I'm stable (suicidal thoughts are almost constant, but I'm stable) and the doctors are keeping an eye on me.

Yeah right. My next psychiatrist's appointment is in February.

But WTH? More money can't hurt, can it?

As a bonus for passing the exam and if TL gets into gear with the paperwork, we should all be on the bottom of the NHS AfC Band 4 (£18,402) before long.

So, more money, more stress and I'm going to be paid more than most HCAs around here. I'm already on a guilt trip.

Whooppee.........:(

Gingernutty

........Aaaaand it's happened again

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3911817

I've received another letter telling me I've breached 2 of the 3 criteria that the Trust uses to measure sickness absence.

The letter goes on to inform me that my Section Leader (different to the one last time) has also been informed of my breach and must now take steps to "manage my absence in accordance with the policy".

Fabulous.....

The exam didn't happen for me. The big industry exam at the end of March had to be postponed for me after my Dad died at the beginning of March.

The books we use for work have been reprinted (badly), there are new codes which we have to learn about, there are monthly rule updates which have included pages of errata to correct the misprints and, just for laughs, we are all now subject to audits on our work.

Great.