M's Woes at Work

Specific disabilities and conditions
1

A few years ago M’s employment support worker made an arrangement with his employers that he would be given a number of specific tasks to do and allowed to go home at 3 pm provided he got those tasks completed. If they wanted him to do any other tasks they would have to tell him about them in plenty of time to get them done before 3. There was also an arrangement that only members of his employers’ family could ask him to do extra tasks, but now all the other employees are asking him to do things for them. Now he has a different support worker and employers and employees alike are asking him to do things for them and insisting that he has to do those for them before doing his own tasks. The rule now imposed on M is that if he doesn’t get all his tasks done by 3 he stays until 6 or after and if he doesn’t complete them by Friday he has to come in on Saturday to complete them. Of course, when he is in they give him more things to do just because he’s there. He is only on contract to work Tuesday to Friday - the shop is shut on a Monday. He has told his support worker about this but doesn’t want her to talk to his employers about it because they will tick him off for talking to her about it.

Another problem is that he gets into arguments with people about comments they have made to him and about him and ends up shouting for which he is sent outside. His employment support worker said she would arrange for an anger management course for him and an autism awareness course for his employers but this has not happened and the other employees keep nagging him about it, but nobody seems interested in finding out about autism and how it can affect the person with it at work.

Thanks for the chance to belly-ache!

Gilli

2

That sounds to me like disability discrimination, people clearly taking advantage of him, BULLYING him to do the things they want him to do rather than the jobs he knows he has to do. I’d talk to ACAS. The support worker sounds useless!

3

Unfortunately M is reluctant for anyone to speak to his employers on his behalf as that would mean they would realize he’d spoken to someone about them and they don’t like him doing that. They see the role of the support worker as being to give off to M for not doing his work. My eldest, who is neurotypical and not vulnerable suggested M should speak to the husband of the husband/wife team and tell him he finds it difficult to do all the things people ask him to do as well as his own regular stuff.