Dismissed from work.

If you are female unions are total rubbish.

Depends on your union. Mine has been great.

OP, I would go through all the bits of the job you lived, and then all the bits that made you ill, and try to find a job role that contains a lot of the first list and little of the second. There are all sorts of roles involving helping people who contact you, but without the potential trauma of the emergency services. For example, I've recently spoken to people on the NHS Blood and Donor site - it's probably going to be lots of talking about whether people are eligible to donate and where their local centres are, nothing like the adrenalin of the emergency services, but still very important. I've no idea if there are any vacancies or where they're actually based, but it's just an idea to help you with thinking about alternative options.

Emergency services life is tough and you need a lot of resilience to cope with it, even on the outskirts of the action in an admin or call centre type role where you aren’t physically being put in danger every day.

You used to be able to do it without a problem, now a toll has been taken on you and you aren’t able to do it anymore. This isn’t a failure on your part, just a sign that you’ve given enough of yourself and now it’s time to move onto something a bit easier on the soul. Not everything can be for all of us forever, your employer isn’t at fault of the rules have been followed but neither are you. Times change and people change and I hope you are very happy in your new position.

Medical retirement then rather than redundancy. But this woman is a big union person and made a miraculous recovery to turn up for the last two weeks of term last July. She makes lots of demands then goes off sick again. Its really annoying!

I am police staff and in my experience with HR and also police staff regs and in my experience a good employer it is rare for this to happen. How helpful was your union?

There is no such thing as medical redundancy! They should have pushed for medical retirement as they’d have to make her up to the earliest date she could retire!

Contact Acas for advice. Did you appeal at the time? If you didn’t it may make it harder but Acas are best placed to advise you

It's sad that you didn't get the help when you needed it and they're treating you like a statistic rather than a person.

Personally I'd write them a strongly worded letter saying how hard you worked, detail about calls you handled, the impact it had on you, and most of your absence is due to their own failure to provide the support you needed in a timely manner. I'd then point out your unblemished attendance since you received the support and say that's it's a shame they cannot see beyond statistics.

But ultimately, they are going on statistics, and a computer sees you as a blot on resources.

As an example being on the other side: I work in a school and have a colleague that has had multiple long stints off with MH issues. Not only do the school have to pay for someone to take her classes, it has a huge impact on the kids (constant cover lessons), not to mention the rest of the department who have to pick up the extra work (marking, planning, extra classes once Y11/Y13 have left etc...). Except just when this person could have been made redundant on medical grounds, their union informed her to come back in for the last two weeks of term so that the school couldn't do medical redundancy. Needless to say they are now off sick again and we are all shattered. Just to point out how long term sickness impacts others...

I hope you're able to move on from this.

What date were you dismissed? I think it’s worth taking to a tribunal if within time limits.

Are you saying you redeployed and lasted four months before going sick again?

If only it was sooo simple!

To be fair. I have never known anyone be sacked because of sickness in the police so your sickness record must have been horrendous. You get six months paid sick leave???

You can be proud that you spent 26 years helping many thousands of people at the point they needed it most. I am sure you dealt calmly and efficiently with life and death situations, saving people and keeping them from harm.

You are a conscientious and reliable worker who turned up for work even when the intolerable working conditions led to mental health issues. You could have signed off sick, but you didn't. You wanted to continue to come in and do what you could. Any failure was just the inevitable result of employers who asked too much and failed to act in your best interests.

43% of police operators stay in the job for less than 5 years, so your contribution was far above what most people can give to such a role.

So hold your head up high. You have so much to be proud of and lots of transferrable skills that employers will be lucky to have.

I am in a totally different industry, so it might be different in the police, but were you given specific targets as part of the capability procedure? And if so, did you meet them?

Its probably also relevant how often your sickness periods were in comparison to your years of service. That's what they will be taking into account

Also its well known call handlers have high turnover due to stress

Agree with this. I am police staff gor 19yrs here. I have a chronic health condition requiring monthly treatment before diagnosis they were terrible and I was put in attendance procedures, as to be honest they were poor but I got unison help. Once diagnosed 10 years ago, I have occ health support, reasonable adjustments such as home working and some leeway with absence due my condition being DDA covered.

I am surprised you were allowed to apply and move whilst on a procedure? I have have holiday restrictions, overtime restrictions previously.

Truth is like a lot of places they really dont give a shit and you are replaceable. Loyalty means nothing

I think the Equality Act has worked against people in some ways in that an employer is obliged to follow their absence policy to avoid treating people differently from each other. It may well come down to how many occasions and how long for the sick leave. If it crosses thresholds, they follow their absence policy regardless of whether you’ve worked there two years or twenty. The policy I’m under at the local authority is worded in a way to allow some discretion from my line manager. A lot depends on the particular sickness absence policy your employer has.

Sorry to hear this has happened.

Frankly I think someone would need to be made of forged steel and coated with teflon to take 999 calls for more than a short period of time. Probably won't make you feel any better but you're not alone in not coping. I knew a chap who was a volunteer for Samaritans and he got dismissed from his bland call centre job as every call he took there started triggering things.

I've also known a few high level finance types who got massively stressed from the pressure at work and quit. A couple of them are quite happy now stocking shelves and staffing tills at Tesco. I think it's a case of finding that good balance that is going to work for each individual.

I understand how hard this must have been, OP, but from what you've said, it sounds like you were in a pattern of getting signed off, then going back for a period, and then getting signed off again. Is that right?

If that's the case, it might simply be that, even though you had been back at work for 4 months, they had lost confidence that you were going to be able to maintain it. Do you think that's possible?