Advice re flexible working/ disability/ occupational health

[hiredandsqueak]

Dd spoke to me today about a hard time she is getting at work.
She works for Local Government, initially full time but then became ill and was dx'd with ankylosing spondylitis and dropped her hours to 16pw as that's as much as she can physically manage.
When she went into the office she used to do 4x 4hr days with Wednesday off so that she could rest as advised by occupational health.
During lockdown work allowed her to do the sixteen hours over the course of the week (six days). Now as things have gotten more back to normal they asked when she could work the sixteen hours during office hours.
Dd asked to split the sixteen hours over three days asking for Monday, Tuesday, Thursday or Monday, Wednesday, Thursday. This would fit well with her need to have a break and also with childcare. To clarify dd works in pensions, there are no deadlines as such but if she had a task on Monday it wouldn't be considered overdue until a full calendar month later so in that respect she's not needed on particular days because of deadlines and she's not required into the office to answer phones or post etc as that isn't part of her role.
Her line manager won't confirm whether she can work three days or which three days she can work which is having repercussions as she can't book annual leave as line manager won't agree any as "I haven't decided whether you are working that day or not" and she's not able to confirm childcare as she can't say for certain which days she will work. She has a hospital appointment coming up soon but again can't confirm whether she needs to inform work that she will work the hours later that day or whether it will be on her day off.
She has been working three days (Monday Wednesday Thursday) for a few weeks now after occ health saw her,( he said in his opinion she wasn't fit for work but she had made every possible adjustment possible to allow her to work) but she needs the line manager to confirm this is her agreed pattern of work so that she can confirm Annual Leave and childcare.
After several phone calls where he said he'd think about it she emailed a fortnight ago and has had no response. What more can she do? Any advice please?

She should talk to HR or go to her manager’s manager and ask for this to be resolved.

Is she in a union? if not, she should join one and ask them to help her get this resolved

Yes I've told her to contact her union. She's going to try one more email, give him chance to respond before going to HR/ union. No idea what he's playing at was always decent when he was in the office.

I've had a lot of problems at work getting reasonable adjustments put in place, and shift days/length are considered reasonable adjustments in this scenario. My employer removed by adjustments with no notice, then proposed to return me to that working pattern after 2 months. My union said I could either accept the 2 month wait, raise a grievance and wait for the outcome, or walk out and raise a grievance. Realistically, I did not want to raise a grievance as I wanted to maintain a good working relationship. I really needed an expert to come along and tell them they were in the wrong.

Perhaps an informal chat with HR who may then be able to intervene and have the chat? Then raise a grievance if that doesn't work.

Just an update on this. Dd emailed her line manager again explaining that this would now be the fourth time she had tried to confirm pattern of work with him without success. She stated her availability again, pointed out occupational health guidance and the need for reasonable adjustments and then stated that if she didn't have confirmation within a week then she would be copying in HR and his line manager. Her line manager responded within 24 hours and days have been agreed. Still no idea why it was such an issue but dd is happy to have got the situation resolved anyway.

Glad she got it sorted, but I wouldn’t have given him that long, two emails earlier I would have ccd his manager, she would have had a reply super quick.