Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello everyone,
I have a friend with ASD and I decided to join the community to learn more. I'm hoping to find some answers here. My friend is 31 and faces a lot of problems. Although she was diagnosed when she was at school, very little seems to have been done for her over the years- no support from the medical side of things as she was growing up and this continues today. She has always tried to cover it up but her constant anxiety over little things and reasking of questions at work, led to her dismissal from a job she had held for 12 years when new management came in and didn't have the patience or understanding to adjust to her needs. They deliberately gave her jobs that would be impossible for her to achieve and when she messed up, they took photos of evidence to enable her dismissal. They didn't take into account her ASD but she is so stressed out about it, I don't think she wants to take any action. Now she is on benefits and struggling financially which is making her even more stressed and anxious. I'm hoping to find out more about how to help her here.
Rona
Looks like a clear case of constructive dismissal/redundancy - the new management set her up to fail, regardless of a known disability. Has your friend kept evidence of what happened? Is there a trade union covering the kind of work she did. While perhaps not being a member they might nevertheless want to take issue with the employer to prevent it happening to anyone else.
She could go to Citizen's Advice Bureau for legal advice. Unfortunately it is now harder to get legal aid but some law firms will take this on on a no-win no fee basis. Also there may be a Community Advocacy Group near you, or a local NAS branch of parents group for autism.
Sometimes a local newspaper can be persuaded to take up the issue and pass it to a national paper, who could raise the profile of what happened
If you have any more details of what was done to remove her from her job, setting it down here might help increase awareness of what we know is going on.
If she is on benefits as a result, someone at DWP/DHSS/Job Centre should have advised her about unfair dismissal when signing on.
There have been some high profile recent cases concerning autism. One was a golf club where a man with autism was employed as a green keeper, but subjected to humiliating treatment, for which he won a substantial award. The other recent one was someone employed as a waiter in a restaurant, where the chef maltreated him making out unfair claims about his autism and underpaying him - again very substantial compensation.