Partner long term sick

[Tootsie1984]

My partner injured his back in work, and has been signed off as unfit since beginning of March.

During this time he has had:
8 private physio sessions.
Assesment via doctor and referred for x-rays and hospital for further testing.
Assessed via occupational health who has declared unfit for work , with no duties available in the work place.

Now he is on strong pain relief which make t hard for him to drive as he is left feeling groggy etc. So he plans when to take pain relief around that but he doesn't go out much unless for medical reasons .

Now work keep calling him in for meetings. He had one beginning of June and now they are calling him in for another one on Friday .
But they only got sent report from occupational health 2 weeks ago to say he was unfit. They want to talk about his route back to work.

Does anyone know is this normal? He feels pressurised yet he has done everything they requested. He is signed off till end off July at least. He has only just had his x-rays this week and still awaiting hospital appointments etc.

Normal-ish I would say, monthly meetings are what's specified in many organisations' policies on long-term sick management although personally (as an HR person) if someone is being signed off for months at a time with no imminent prospect of a return I would tend to push that out to slightly less frequent as you can find yourself repeating the same questions/info over and over with little change in between - but in general the employer is entitled to be finding out how he is and what are his likely prospects of a return to work at reasonably frequent intervals, yes. And if it was a workplace injury they'll want to be sure they're absolutely squeaky clean on following their own policies and being seen to 'support' him - I know many people don't experience these meetings and frequent 'keeping in touch' calls/messages as supportive and just want to be left alone but then again you get the cohort of people who complain 'work didn't even check in with me', 'they didn't seem to care if I came back or not' so sometimes the employer can't win either way!

If they've just received an OH report there may be things they want to discuss in that with him - it shouldn't be to question the validity of what his doctors are saying or 'pressure' him but more to see how he is, does he agree with the report, is there anything the employer can be doing to help him, will any adjustments be needed when he comes back and can they start planning for that now? From experience things like special seating or equipment can take ages to order in especially if the employer has a burdensome procurement/PO process, or if it's change of duties that might be needed, sorting that out can also be tricky if it means other people's jobs have to be rearranged which might require giving them advance warning, or if they were wanting to redeploy him to more office based work (common with MSK injuries) there might be supervision/training for that to sort - so from their POV if they are thinking he's potentially going to be back in in 4 weeks at the end of July/start of August they need time to sort things out hence the discussion now.

Can he ask for the meeting to be via phone or Teams/Zoom rather than coming in - seems like a reasonable ask to me? Or if he has e.g. a key hospital appointment in the next few weeks he could reply and say he's happy to discuss etc but will have more useful information by middle of July and could the meeting be postponed until then?

Thank you for your answer. Work haven't actually been supportive. They have accused him of lying. Read the private physio report (that they paid for) how they wanted and she had to contact and put them straight. Told him he should just stop his pain relief and give it a try against every health professionals opinion. At one point they were ringing him at least twice a week to try and get him to come back in.

Occupational health have been out to access the work place too and due to nature of his job, have advised there is nothing that can be done at present time to aid his return to work.

We don't mind meeting them but feels like each time they basically accuse him of lying and read reports how they want too.

Occupational health said earliest time scale would be a minimum of 6 weeks BUT in her view it would be much longer, with a chance he will.enver be able to go back to his current role.

Work tried to offer a different role but occupational health have said it is still not sustainable at present time.

It's hard as I need to go with as without pain relief he is in agony. But also gets confused . But being a full time carer to our disabled child who is only on a.part time school placement at present, an older one at school and a preschooler who doesn't attend a placement it's hard getting sitters etc.

I was wondering when they decide next steps is as after this note in July he will have been off around 22 weeks 😞😞😞

Problem work have is he has done this particular job over 12 years. As it is very heavy going they fail to keep staff as they can't seem to stick with it. Other lad who works it sadly takes a lot of time for and doesn't seem as able. Sow e understand orders etc are behind so they want my partner back on his job asap.
But sadly himself and all medical people involved have said that moat probably will never happen