Being moved and made to do sleep ins help!

[Difficultparent]

Hi all, wondered if anyone had any advice or experiences. I am a care worker, I work in voluntary sector, TUPE'd from NHS 4 years ago. I am part time, my service is 24 hour shifts but I have worked set days for last 3 years due to caring needs for my son who is autistic and has been out of school for some time due to severe anxiety. Suddenly my service manager is moving me and other colleagues. They are moving me to a service with sleep ins. My current service does not have sleep ins. They are saying I have to do 1 sleep in per week in addition to my hours. I am arguing that I should not have to as despite being asleep i will still be away from my home and family for an additional 10 hours per week. I have never been away from my boy either work wise or personally and neither do I wish to be and I feel to suddenly expect me to be away from my home and family for 1 night per week is not reasonable. I have tried to raise a grievance but they won't let me, saying that I have no grievance to raise! They are also saying I can only have my working arrangements for 4 months only, then I will have to work the rota. I will not be able to work if this is the case. Has anyone experienced this?

What does your employment contract
Say? If it says in there that they can ask you to do sleep ins then it may not be easy to get out of doing it.

It says I have to work day and night shifts and on call. However, waking nights are different from sleep ins as they are hours which make up your contracted hours. Sleep ins are an 'add on' to my contracted hours. Terms and conditions make it clear sleep ins are not 'on call' but HR says different.

I work within the private care sector & from what I have heard most providers are moving away from sleep ins because new regulations mean they have to pay you the minimum wage for all hours you are there rather than just a flat sleep in fee. Also as you have a disabled child can you put in a flexible working request, or have you tried that?

Thanks teatime, I did put in a flexible working request, I asked to formalise my current arrangements, but they have said that when I move, I can have my working arrangement for 4 months only, then I will have to go back to a fully flexible rota. As if my son will stop being autistic in 4 months...

Call Acas or your union if you have one - If you don’t have one join!

Sometimes these companies are so unreasonable, I would contact ACAS too for advice. Have they started paying sleep in staff for all of the hours they are there? Lots of places haven't & they are going to be facing large back pay bills! The company I work for no longer do sleep ins, they now just have wake nights as there's no way they would pay people an hourly rate to sleep!

No, they pay people a flat rate for sleep ins, but they say they can do this as they pay above the national living wage, so if even if you take sleep in hours into account, the payment plus your pay adds up to more than NLW. I have contacted union and ACAS, they're not being much help though. Been waiting on union contacting employment lawyer for about 6 weeks and can't afford to pay for one myself.