HELP NEEDED REGARDING FLEXIBLE WORKING AGAIN....SORRY!!!

[Nattynoos]

Hi all

This may be a little long so i will apologise now!

I have a 10 year old son who has adhd and autism so i have put in a request for flexible working hours.

I had a meeting with my admin team leader who came up with a good (or so i thought) solution to the problem, whick would allow me to have all the school holidays off. The solution was that i use up all my allocated leave that ive been given for the year and the other days that i need i just work a Friday to bank those hours which would then allow me to take every school holiday off with my son (hope your all still with me!). I would though, have 2 weeks holiday in the summer (already accounted for) and just work 2 days a week as ive already banked the other 2 days (i only work Monday - Thurday) and i was happy to do this. I run this past my Team Leader who i work with and he was happy for me to do this, the request went in along with a copy of my DLA to prove that my son is classed as disabled and then the problems started!!!

My team leader came back to me and told me that the head of service, who had to ok this has asked her to find me a job in education as they cannot give me a term time only contract (i was not asking for this) and then yesterday she e mailed me a job and told me i should go for it!!!....does it sound to you like they are trying to get rid of me, i dont know whether to be flattered that they are trying to help me find another job or insulted!
She also mentioned the he said if i let her do it then all the other admin mothers in the service would want to do it and then we would be left with centres with no admin support and also that someone else might then say they get DLA so we have to do it for them too!!!
I thought that we covered every angle on this, even to make sure that adequate cover was in place and to be honest i try to take most of my sons holidays off anyway, so i cant see why they are making a mountain out of this.....or maybe i am looking at it wrong :-(

Thanks for reading this and your input would be much appreciated.

Well, regardless of how it is officially structured, you are effectively asking for term time working. You will not be in the office at all in school holidays.

If they want to turn down a valid request, it needs to be on one of these grounds:
?burden of additional costs
?detrimental effect on ability to meet customer demand
?inability to reorganise work among existing staff
?inability to recruit additional staff
?detrimental impact on quality
?detrimental impact on performance
?insufficiency of work during the periods the employee proposes to work
?planned structural changes

If they do turn you down, they could suggest another role where term time would work, but the first step should be looking at your current role.

I would suggest (if you don't want to move) going back and saying that you would like them to think about your actual request and give the respopnse on that first, then take it from there.

tbh it sounds like your team leader is looking out for you. Would the other job suit you in terms of role / location?