Daughter 'let go' from apprenticeship after 1 day!

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions. After several days of not eating or sleeping my daughter is feeling better about herself again and starting to look for a new apprenticeship.

The cruelty and how underhand some people can be without regard for others never ceases to amaze me. 

I am so glad that I have raised a respectful, hardworking and loyal young lady who remains so no matter how many times she is knocked back and put down.

I wish I had her resilience!

Hi Liv,

So sorry for yourself and your daughter.

Have you anywhere local to you where she could do voluntary work? An animal sanctuary, rideing for the disabled etc, where she could gain experience, confidence etc and hopefully get a good referance.

Have you been to your local jobcentre?  They used to have disability employment advisers, I presume they still have.  They should be able to arrange support in the workplace.

Good Luck. 

This information www.anapprenticeship.co.uk/fixed-term-apprentice-contracts-dismissal.html about dismissal of an apprentice may be useful. It depends what you want to do about it. I have read previously that in (general) employment law, a contract can be verbal and does not have to be written. But given that they have emailed your daughter I am guessing (in a legal setting e.g. employment tribunal) that could be seen as their acknowledgement of a contract - if they did not have a contract why would they need to dismiss someone? (Rehtorical). I would make a similar point regarding paying someone as demonstrating an agreement to carry out work i.e. employment.

In terms of their awareness of her autism, are you certain that the college would have passed this information on? Unless expressly agreed, it could actually constitute a data protection beach for the college to divulge this to a third party. Or would it have been so obvious to the employer from the face to face meetings that they should reasonably have known that she had a disability and therefore should have made reasonable adjustments?

If you want to go down a legal route, get advice asap, for example from Citizens' Advice, as there are very strict deadlines for applying for an employment tribunal, and there are other steps you may need to take before then.

On the other hand, your post may be more about sharing the huge unfairness and upset caused by your daughter's experience. After all that effort of identifying somewhere and communicating/organizing for it to happen, it is certainly a knock to her confidence. But it doesn't sound like she did anything wrong and that they would not make for a very supportive learning environment if the apprenticeship had continued. The fact that they contacted her at a late stage could be due to their disorganisation and unpreparedness to receive an apprentice. 

A next step might be to contact the college. They will probably have had students before who (for a range of reasons) haven't completed their apprenticeship. I would hope that they would have some suggestions about what your daughter can do from this point.

All the best for you and your daughter coping with this.

They should have been aware as it was on her college application and they had met her twice before offering her the apprenticeship. She attended mainstream school, was a senior prefect as well as head of two different departments and did a weeks work experience in a similar field when in yr 10 where her 'employer' specifically said she got on very well with everyone.

I am just shocked that they could be so unkind after stringing her along for so long and getting her hopes up.

I am really upset to hear that, I understand how your daughter is feeling that way. To me sounds like the company has done this becuase of something totally unrelated to your daughter and is just using this as an excuse.

The way they have done it is very cowardly too, not to mention anything on the day, and to just send an email. They can in no way judge whether that role is right for her in such a short space of time.

I know nothing can be done about this particular apprenticeship. I wonder if it is worth writing to them to at least let them know how you and your daughter feels about this and what effect it has had. If anything to save someone else to suffer a similar experience with them.

In the past I was in the middle of the very difficult situation with an apprenticship scheme in a company I was working with. They offered it to a friend of mine, who I put in a good word for. He is a genuinely good bloke, and did everything they asked of him. A few months down the line, the company decided they didn't want to continue with the scheme. Put me in a really difficullt position, and was horrified to hear afterwards that my friend had turned down an offer of a job to take on this apprenticship, because he really wanted to work in the IT industry. Before he took on the apprenticship I did give him an honest view of the company, warts and all.

Random

Hi Liv'

That is the sort of experience that you don't want anyone to go through. Did they know that she has autism and were they, in any way, prepared for that?