Dismissed from work.

[user1464187087]

Good evening,
Please be gentle with me.
I was dismissed from work a few months ago. I worked as a staff member for the police for nearly 26 years.
For many years I worked as a police 999 Call Handler and ended up sufferring with anxiety as a result. I took calls from people who comitted suicide, died in fatal house fires, people that witnessed fatal road traffic collisions and a hell of a lot more.
I was dismissed because of my sickness due to anxiety and feel it was unfair.
I was in a union and felt that they didn't help me.
Am I being unreasonable to think this is unfair?
I didn't have months off sick and had been back working full time for four months at the time of my dismissal.
I started working there when I was 17 and was dismissed when I was 42.
I can't seem to get over it.
Sorry for the long post.

You charmer. Even shouting the last bit.
I took 999 calls for years without 'going of bloody sick'.
Dealing with trauma can build up on you over years, a drip drip effect if you like.
That's what happened to me anyway.
At the time of doing that job (before becoming poorly) I was running 10k three or four times a week.
I also got myself a less stressful job in the police that I applied for.
I can understand your post if I had done the job for a month, however I think you are being a bit harsh.

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?

I had couselling through work and now i've been dismissed i'm paying for my own.
Work absolutely supplied counselling.
I know a lot of people are saying that i'm not giving the full picture here.
What do you want to know?
Remember this is new territory to me.

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.

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???

Hi,
Your post has made me cry!!
I have no idea who you are.
That is such a lovely message.

If only it was sooo simple!

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

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

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.

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

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!

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?

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!

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.

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.

Don’t be daft she’s in her 40s and clearly capable of work just not police related work.

If this role caused you so much anxiety then it wasn’t right for you im afraid.
I work in a similar environments meant where staff are very distressing information.
We require staff who are resilient enough to be able to work through such distressing information.
Sorry to say but someone needs to be able to process this as distressing as it is so this role was not right for you anxiety you need to accost this.

But she’d already been moved to a reception role, which seem to be working out just fine for her?

I did the job for a lot of years. This wasn't some flash in the pan job and I didn't go off sick for a long time.
I went off sick towards the end.
Just for perspective. I dealt with fatal house fires, where I was the last person to speak with the deceased. Tried talking people down from bridges who jumped, spoke with people that had just been raped by a stranger. Parents who arrived home to find that their child had hung themselves, A call from a child who had just witnessed his mum being murdered by dad,
I got my long service and good conduct medal a few years ago. I worked for the police for nearly 26 years.
I class myself as quite resillient.

Had you been under OHS at work? Was your doctor aware of your anxiety? Were you on medication? Anxiety is a disability covered under the disability/equality act. Were you given warnings? Did they provide help for you?

I don’t know how you lasted as long as you did

Just to clarify, being off sick is not ideal at all. I do feel hard done to but i'm more sad than anything else.
25 years plus is a big chunk of your life.
I'm sorry that people think that i've been trying to mislead them or hide anything.
For clarity, I was definitely off sick more than I should have been, I wouldn't have been dismissed otherwise and I totally get your point.
I never posted this for an argument, I haven't got much fight left in me.
I just want to reiterate that I was off sick for a valid reason. I was nearly sectioned at one point because of all the things I heard over a lot of years.
Thank you to everyone who has been kind, I really appreciate it.
Take care of yourselves and try to be kind. A kind word to someone struggling means a lot. 😍

Thank you so much.
Over the years it caught up with me and some posters are so flippant.
They don't have a clue I imagine.

Thank you for answering all those calls OP ❤️

It sounds horrendous, I've often wondered how people cope. To go through all that it's no surprise it built up and became too much. You are a hero for taking them all.

Yes agree - police have treated you very badly. Speak to an employment lawyer if you want to? If they get a settlement or pay out most of them just charge a fee which comes off it I think so it won't cost for the initial chats.

If not - you really will be an asset to a new company and I am sure you will find something much less stressful. I think most employers would be understanding if you explain there was no support and it started to impact your health. Also you won't need to tell them more than you want to anyway.

Don't take other posters too heart. There's a lot of odd bitter people on here when it comes to jobs and sickness. I would just ignore them.