Case Study 1 – Grievance

A young deaf man was working for a well-known café chain. The café itself was big and roomy; the staff were easy to communicate with and he worked well with them all. He also had a good relationship with the manager. Suddenly this all changed when one day he was told, with no prior warning, that he had to go and work at a different branch. He accepted this and went to work at the new location. However this was completely different to the other café; it was cramped, with lots of staff dashing about. No one talked to him and his work area was facing a wall; which he found very distracting as a deaf person because people were walking backward and forwards behind him all the time.

He decided to seek legal advice as he was not happy with the situation. He had not been asked if he was happy with the relocation and had not been given any prior notice of the move. A meeting was arranged with his employer to discuss this. He attended with an interpreter; unfortunately the meeting didn’t go well as he did not understand what was happening. A second meeting was arranged but did not go ahead as there was no interpreter present. At a third meeting, it was agreed that the client could bring an advocate to future meetings.

At the fourth and final meeting, an advocate accompanied him. The client accepted his dismissal but after discussion with the advocate (who encouraged him to make his feelings known) he asked for compensation for the way he had been treated. His request for one year’s wages was rejected by the panel. After lengthy negotiations, he obtained £800 compensation for two months’ loss of earnings.

The client was very satisfied with the outcome of the final meeting. This was mostly due to the fact that he fully understood everything that was discussed at the meeting. The advocate was instrumental in ensuring that the content of the discussion was fully understood by the client. As the client was unfamiliar with some of the language used during the discussions, the advocate had to modify the BSL to enable the client to fully understand. For example, the panel told the client that ‘his speed of work was not good enough’, the client did not understand the term ‘speed of work’. The advocate knew from his facial expression that he had not understood and interrupted the meeting to clarify with the client the term ‘speed of work’. When she explained that they thought he was too slow, he strongly objected.

Case Study 2 – University

A young deaf lady expressed to the advocate her desire to go to university. The advocate encouraged her to pursue this dream; she was successful in securing a place at the university she wanted to attend. The case was closed, however not long afterwards the client returned to the advocate because she had experienced a problem with booking BSL interpreters for her course. She is not entitled to Disabled Student Allowance (DSA)* because she is an EEA national and has to live in UK for at least three years before entitled. The client decided to defer the course; and with the support of the advocacy service she contacted UCAS and successfully deferred by one year.

The client returned to the advocate one year later to start the process of preparing for university. The advocate supported her in applying for finance. Everything was successfully approved and she started university last September. * DSA grants help students meet the extra course costs they can face as a direct result of a disability or specific learning difficulty. They are aimed at helping disabled people to study on an equal basis with other students.