[Closed] Employment law.. NHS want to demote my Mom?

Before TJ says it...get the union onto it; your mother is a member, isn't she?

Agreed on the Union. It's complex and needs a specialist.

Yes and no. Can only speak from experience of other orgs, not NHS, but if the role involves eg: being on site or performing specific tasks that illness or injury prevents you doing then they are obliged to make reasonable adjustments, but if they are not possible then eventually there has to be a right to replace you.

As an alternative, to offer you a role that you can do within your restrictions is a pretty fair option.

So to look at your post

- what has been done to enable your mum to do her role remotely / is it really the case she needs to be on site (can eg: Zoom or Teams substitute?)

- if so, and the option is dismissal or taking another role that can be done, but which is at a different grade, it's not really a demotion, it's an attempt to alleviate the situation for both her and employer.

https://www.gov.uk/dismiss-staff/dismissals-due-to-illness

No

Its much more complex than that and my bet is you do not have the whole story

Band 6 work cannot be done from home tho - thats true. partly yes but completely no. ( in general) as you have to be able to take the clinical lead on the ward, manage staff etc - or is she not ward based?

A band 6 charge nurse working from home would be highly unusual and is not able to do at least half of the job. OK for for a short time but not long term

There will be policies in place to be followed. Usually entitled " promoting attendance at work" and others.

its a really tricky situation - One for the union.

My guess would be this is being offered as a compromise - but I do not see how a band 5 could work from home either. the alternative being dismissal on grounds of capacity - ie she is no longer able to do the job she was appointed to. So take a step down to band 5 and then work be found to fill her time that is actually band 2/3 admin work as a compromise. the band 8 can then appoint someone else to the band 6 job who is actually able to do it.

first step should be an occupational health assessment then a case conference with senior management, HR, occupational health union and your mum

this is what my ward manager tried to do to me when I injured my shoulder. Unfortunately for my boss I had read all the policies and basically tore her a new one pointing out the places she had breached policy and lied. I won but it made me a personal enemy

My advice would be to gather all the policies and all th evarious letters and go to the union once she has read them all

the best outcome ( depending on your mums age might be retirement on grounds of capacity - then she would have all her pension made up to retirement age ( again more complex - two levels of this) which would allow her to retire now taking the pension that she would have had at 60 had she worked until 60

Oh - and most managers I have met have no idea of the correct way to do things like this. Very few folk actually read the p0olicies like I do - even manager. Its fun to quote policy at them and watch them flounder

She is a member of the Union and is waiting to here back from them.

Her cancer consultant has gone absolutely nuts.

She can do pretty much all of her job remotely apart from running a shift.

The laptop they have goiven her to do the job hasn't been loaded with the correct programs to do it and my mom has told her boss this numerous times and she has done nothing about it.

She can do pretty much all of her job remotely apart from running a shift.

I am sorry Renton but she really cannot. How can she manage staff? Monitor care standards? Deal with complaints from patients, do ward based audits, etc etc etc.

someone else is doing half of her job and being paid band 5 to do so.

The laptop they have goiven her to do the job hasn’t been loaded with the correct programs to do it and my mom has told her boss this numerous times and she has done nothing about it.

Does she have this in writing? that should be the first thing she does if not.

" I asked on this date to be given access to this, again on this date and am still awaiting access"

You need to understand what they are classing this as, it won't be demotion. Probably a capability issue and they probably feel that they are providing an alternative role, which is probably overpaid and they feel they are being quite generous.

You need to understand this for 2 reasons:

First if you want to fight it you will need to counter their reasoning if you stand any chance of reversing this (from what TJ says above it doesn't sound like you have much of a case).

Second you need to understand their mindset, they might genuinely think they are going out of their way to look after a long serving employee who can no longer do the job she is employed to do. Go in hard now and you may be looking at a much worse outcome if you upset people who think they are trying to help.

Management will find a way to down grade your mum as she is not doing the job she is being paid to do and other staff have complained about it, so either redeployment to another department or departure, other staffs concerns must be taken into account as they are curently dong part of her work on less pay.

I guess coming from a military background and knowing the only way you got a demotion was if you did something wrong has skewed my veiw somewhat.

Afterall it isn't my mother's fault she has cancer.

I believe her job was pre op assessment which a lot of is being done online.

Others here have experience of the NHS and are more use, but what has not been explicitly suggested is to make a record and gather evidence create an accurate timeline.

It is a bit rubbish but as others have suggested it sounds like there is a compromise to be reached in this case.

pre op assessment

Is not a field I know anything much about - a lot of my comments come from looking at this from a ward based perspective but I would expect pre op assessment to require a substantial amount of patient contact

It is NOT a demotion. Its an alternative post within her capability. The alternative might well be dismissal on grounds of incapacity

It might be possible to protect her salary for a period as well and to hold her substantive post open for a period of time
Unions ( and I hope she is in unison not the RCN ) are very used to dealing with these issues - they arise quite commonly

Whilst I think TJ, with all his experience, had got it right, I'm just wondering if the DDA fits in here, if this is a result of her cancer? Presumably that is where the reasonable adjustment bit comes in?

Cancer is automatically Equality Act so strong protection and need for reasonable adjustments. NHS being large organisation is quite difficult for them to deny adjustments unless outlandish requests.
As above, occ health referral needed if not already done with consideration of age whether ill health retirement be best/ cheapest option.
I'd be recommending medical redeployment to non-face to face role as a good get out for Trust. I'm occ health specialist nurse, not NHS currently but plenty time in it, as TJ says likely manager and HR are making complete mess of it and not following correct process so this may give her stronger case to argue for what she wants.

My bet would be the manager is making a mess of it - NHS HR are usually IME pretty good

with my similar case it was very telling that HR kept quiet when they tried to railroad me but when I put my complaints about process and policy in HR accepted it without question despite the fact my version was basically -" the manager is lying and cannot follow policy". this then became the official record 🙂 - didn't make me popular but I got the outcome I wanted

The more I think about it the grade reduction without protected salary is more than a bit odd.

What have HR said?