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Occ Health referral

OAP - Older Autistic Person

Following my diagnosis last year I have struggled to get support from my workplace. I was eventually referred to Occ Health after a fight to get the referral.

Occ Health agreed there were some very reasonable adjustments which would make work better for me. Workplace agreed and should have put them in place.

7 months on work are still not consistent in providing reasonable adjustments.

As a result of having to make yet another complaint about the lack of reasonable adjustments I had a moment of being overwhelmed by thoughts and had a small accident at work with a piece of equipment - no-one was hurt. Very little damage.

As I declared on an accident form that the effect of repeatedly not having the reasonable adjustments led to rumination distracting me, work now want to refer me to Occ Health again.

All this is happening at the same time that I have lodged a grievance for disability discrimination (as advised by union) due to "failure to provide reasonable adjustments."

I feel they are now using the accident, an effect of their lack of support for my disability, as a reason to get rid of me because I can't be trusted with the equipment needed despite no previous incidents in over 30 years of using that type of equipment.

Union are involved, but I could do with some advice / reasssurance.

Parents

  • Refusing an occupational health assessment has worked against people in court in the past. https://www.thompsonstradeunion.law/news/lelr/weekly-issue-802/boundaries-of-behaviour some employers have said that ‘we couldn’t gauge the risk because they refused the occupational health assessment. So we had to sack them.’

  • in reply to Peter

    Yeah - I'm not going to refuse. I am just having issues with them specifying WHY they are referring me.

    All I have had so far is there are "concerns" but won't identify what exactly those concerns are. I am entitleed to know exactly why I am being referred, and union rep has stepped in to try and sort the situation out.

    I fought for six months to get an OH referral after Autism diagnosis and had referrals in the past as have always declared previously diagnosed depression/anxiety disabilities on application forms.

    In my previous career it was relatively standard to refer to OH on employment to ensure all was OK to work. I always sailed through as when given support I have pretty much zero issues with work. It only falls apart when support is not given, as is the case now.

    I feel like I have been saying along the lines of: "You promised safety equipment as I identified a risk of breaking a leg - health and safety agreed - you didn't provide the safety equipment - I broke my leg - now you are blaming me for breaking my leg."

  • in reply to OAP - Older Autistic Person

    I think if you emphasise at the occupational health meeting that the only reason the accident happened is because the reasonable adjustments weren’t in place there’s a very good chance the occupational health team will write a report that basically says no put to be reasonable adjustments in place and did we stutter.

    if that happens and your boss is looking for an excuse to sack you it’s going to leave him in an untenable position. if he says the reasonable adjustments are too onerous well how can he explain that if they’re basically the same as before.

    it’s only if occupational health turns around and recommend some new additional reasonable adjustments in order to handle the situation that caused the accident ‘that he might try and turn around and say oh no this is impossible we couldn’t possibly be expected to go that far.’ That’s probably what your boss is hoping for. Some new expectation placed upon him that he can use as an excuse to take issue with to try and sack you.

    if he doesn’t get that and he’s still sacks you when the reasonable adjustments haven’t really changed. Well I think you’ll agree it looks quite odd given that he didn’t take issue with the first occupational health report.

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