Friend and Continued Work Absence

[GentleWord]

I have a friend who has some mental and physical health diagnoses. She qualified as a teacher more than ten years ago. She has worked in different settings - state schools, private schools, and preschools.

Since then, she has had a few jobs as a teacher, but on average, she has up to half the time she is employed off sick. This does become an issue, and mostly she has to move on.

Never quietly. It usually goes through legal channels and I know the company have settled at least twice.

Before, I didn't think much about this, but now I have reason to think about schooling, I don't think it is fair that she keeps taking jobs that she cannot do. I'm actually unsure how she manages to get a new job with her history but apparently schools have only very recently been demanding of the last reference and now you can give "bad" references.

I don't think it is fair on the children to have a teacher who is so unreliable. I don't think it is fair on the staff. I think after a decade, it should be clear to her and her family that she cannot be a teacher. However, I think they cling to her profession as a status thing.

The same pattern is occurring again where shw is started to have repeated and medium term absences from a job she started last year. I think this time I should be a bit more honest with her about her career and the other people affected by how she engages with her job.

Unreasonable - dont say anything and just support her

Reasonable - find the words to say that teaching isn't an appropriate career choice.

Again, are you living under a rock? Have you not heard about the dismantling of NHS mental health provisions? In my area they are virtually non existent with waiting lists running into years, and frankly if a free “beating the blues” course was sufficient to sort you out you couldn’t have been that unwell in the first place.

And how much is your rent and mortgage and all your other outgoings that you could afford private therapy on 25k a year?

Wow

Thinking on this further it must have been a very long time ago, since you said you paid £45 an hour for your therapy. That is a very low hourly rate that you may only get these days if you qualified for reduced fees through being on benefits or similar. No therapist is charging £45 an hour now, more like double that. So your experience is in no way relevant to the discussion.

Well clearly it wasn’t sufficient otherwise I wouldn’t have continued to access the other support I mentioned, including accessing private therapy, however over the years all of these attempts I’ve made have kept me going, kept me in work, and very gradually contributed to an improvement.

My overall point is that people should prioritise their resources to working on their mental health and chronic health conditions. What is your overall point? That we should all give up, accept defeat, quit work, and be done with it?

My overall point is that you’re talking nonsense. You stated that it was simply a matter of priorities and she could afford to pay for private therapy because she was earning a salary, when you have no idea of her financial situation and your experience of therapy only costing £45 an hour is in no way relevant to what it costs these days.

My most recent therapist was £45 an hour, I only stopped seeing her a couple months ago. She’s based in the north but offers virtual therapy so available to anyone. Before that I was seeing a psychotherapist in London for £45 an
hour, that was a while ago, 2020.

There’s a lot of teachers off on long term sick that are getting paid full pay and have no intention of going back - giving no shits about the kids that aren’t getting a proper education because the school can’t afford to pay 2 teachers to do one job so they keep having temp covers to do their work and the children’s work suffers and therefore the children end up without a decent qualification at the end. All due to the selfishness of the teachers who don’t want to teach 🤬

No decent (qualified, registered, experienced) therapist in my area of London - not a salubrious one either - is charging £45 an hour, I tell you that for nothing. You couldn’t even hire a PT for that.

YABU. You are a spectator that is trying to be a pundit in this. Have you considered that besides your friend’s ongoing difficulties she might also feel trapped in this situation? Whatever route is taken into Education tends to mean you spend years qualifying and training and then if you find yourself in your friend’s situation you find yourself unqualified for careers outside Education. Then there is the separate issue of the Government wanting everyone to work regardless of all else - then the other issue that even to work somewhere considered “unskilled” you need either an obscure Level 2 to 5 qualification or 2 to 3 years experience- and on top of that I hope she hasn’t confided in you about any financial difficulties which makes jobs in other industries and working patterns unattainable.
Your friend won’t have told you everything. I’m sure you have not told her you’re talking about her in this way on a public forum. I am also disappointed that you becoming a parent has made you turn on your friend in this way - I imagine you would not want your DC friend to do this if they are struggling in the future. If you cannot offer genuine friendship to her, I suggest you start to withdraw contact so she can focus on her true friends

Having always worked public sector jobs including teaching this is really common. Certain people will consistenly take the maximum amount of time off sick on full pay, then make sure they're back long enough to do the same again when the appropriate period of time has passed. They always seem to be miraculously better when the full pay time period runs out.

You can't get rid of them eventhough you know they're playing the system because of the unions. In teaching it absolutely affects the outcomes especially with little ones who need consistency. Used to really annoy me to see the same people year on year taking the maximum time on full pay, it became a running joke.

Most adults need to work to live. She comes from a rich family but they arent rich enough to fully finance her. She would never for instance, take social housing or pay rent. That's her values.

Its easier for schools to settle rather than prove they haven't violated her rights.

Yes this happens a lot

None of which has anything to do with the way mental health can be affected by work stress.

I’ve experienced this too. One school I worked at, both the head and deputy played this game for 3 years. Finally the governors ousted them. One would go off sick late September / early October and return late June. One year she went on a touring holiday of Canada in August. The following year, the Galápagos Islands. Miraculous recoveries each time.
Meanwhile, the rest of us covered extra duties, assemblies etc in her absence and the absolute piss take was when the SIP (school improvement partner) praised her for the school’s SATs results when she hadn’t even been there. The staff and parents lost all confidence in her and the governors (until they finally sorted her some sort of early retirement package at god knows what price) and the pupils were only not affected due to the huge efforts and high competence of the staff left behind and the fact they’d never really known them be there!

Do her a favour and cut the friendship. Imagine bitching about a ‘friend’ on the internet like this.

I'm surprised that the employers aren't capable of reading her Cv or job application and seeing that she's got a poor job history. if they still offer her the job so be it.

If she's had her employment terminated before 2 years are up there's no legal basis to settlement surely. ?

I see the OP has been back and answered a few points but still hasn't answered my question as to what support she gives her friend when she is struggling.

Is she really a friend OP? Or a colleague that you're covering for?

I actually wonder if this person exists at all, or if this thread is just a thinly disguised dig at people with mental or physical health issues. Some of the things this woman has said about her “friend” are vague and generic, she won’t answer specific questions, and some of her answers are so ludicrous as to be laughable.

This is probably someone who has a beef about a completely different colleague being “on the sick” and getting something (time off, sick pay) that she doesn’t. Either way, the OP is a thoroughly nasty and unpleasant individual.

Couldn’t agree more.

Yep. It’s a classic “sick person gets something I don’t, waaaaaaah, it’s not faaaaaaaaair” post, the OP picks the hot topic of children’s education so a whole forum of parents with a vested interest in that are onside with her.
Didn’t quite work out that way though, did it.

There are people like this though.

When I was a governor a head teacher did that “re-setting the clock” thing continuously. Apparently you are not able to view a candidate’s previous sickness record, and of course a reference wouldn’t mention it. The only way is to “informally” do a background check.

Anyone can fall ill with whatever complaint. Doing it time and again in different settings - especially if using the clock method - is not really playing fair.

Such as towards the end of the year when children are moving on or up. Then she starts taking weeks off for mental health related conditions and this is often on top of odd days as she feels she is "immunocompromised" and has "severe IBS".

As she feels she is immunocompromised? I'm sorry, I must have missed the part where you said that you're her doctor as well as her friend.

What you're getting at is that you think she's blagging or overplaying these conditions, and her mental health, in order to get time off work. What a lovely friend you must be. Why would you keep in contact with someone you clearly feel is a lazy scrounger...unless you just like having someone to look down on?

She's perfectly entitled to take employment in the field she's trained and qualified for, despite any health conditions. Her employer has legal duties towards any employee with certain health issues, and it is their responsibility - and their's only - to ensure that the children she is teaching aren't disadvantaged.

If multiple employers have let her go as a result of her health issues, an she's she's been successful in bringing tribunal cases against them, that means two things.

1- Her medical records will have been fully scrutinized, her doctors will have confirmed her conditions to be legitimate and serious enough for her to miss work, and multiple tribunals will have agreed with these assessments.

2 - Multiple employers have failed in their duty of care to you 'friend', and dismissed her illegally.

I don't know about you, but my first instinct in a situation like that would be to support my 'friend', not insist that she does a job that you feel is menial enough not to matter.

If I was her I would get a zero hours, very flexible job where I can cancel my shifts on a regular basis without penalisation. Obviously I wouldn't get paid for the days I'm off. Otherwise I'd consider medically retiring. It's true teaching is a very poor choice for someone that unwell. I mean no salaried job would accept fifty percent attendance.

Surely OP can look at her friend's behaviour and think it may be unethical to pursue job after job knowing how limited her ability to fulfil the terms of her employment is, without it meaning she's wishing bad things upon her, or have that mean she is a bad friend? Teaching is possibly not the right career for her as there is an expectation that for fixed weeks of the year you are expected to be fulfilling the duty of educating children. I have a family member much like the OP's friend, and whilst lovely, I honestly think she likes the idea of being a teacher more than the reality. She has had a lot of absence. The children she teaches have had a lot of supply teachers. Obviously I have no idea how this has affected their learning but I can't imagine it's great. She won't think about a career change, even though job clearly isn't really for her. I'm not sure what the answer is, as we should all be able to take time off for illness and recuperation, without fear of losing our jobs, but surely there comes a point where you can't just have the right to stay in a job that you can't actually do indefinitely?