Hi all,
I’m a teaching assistant at a school. Due to my MS, the school moved me out of class and have me doing menial office tasks, for what I can see is no real reason.
They said that they are worried I might fall on a child due to my balance, but my balance is fine. It is making me feel depressed as the new role is very tedious.
Are they allowed to just move me out of my role like this? My union says they want a risk assessment, which the school suddnely came up with after I asked, and on it they say that I’ve had falls! Never. One time a child has pulled me over but that’s not due to imbalance. I’ve had several meetings and explained that what they have done is not reasonable, and that they are supposed to making reasonable adjustments for me if needed, and not move me out of class so that they don’t have to have any worry.
They now want an occupational health report, which is fine, except that it will take up to 9 weeks! I can’t carry on like this for that long :|.
Would anyone have any suggestions, or anyone I can contact to resolve this more quickly? Thanks
That sounds awful and totally infuriating. I could understand it more if they were worried that a child could unbalance you and you could fall over and hurt yourself - not entirely implausible - but the idea that you are (a) much more likely than another staff member to fall spontaneously onto one of the little brutes and (b) in absolute terms so likely to do so that you should be barred from the classroom sounds far-fetched and thoroughly disproportionate to any known risk. Don’t panic, stay calm, get your rep behind you and do what you need to do to inject some good sense and grown-up thinking into this silly situation. Good luck.
Sounds very frustrating, I mean I’m not sure they can actually do that. Interesting as I’m actually going to look this up. Different job to yours, I am a care assistant in a nursing home. Myself and my boss sat down and discussed everything, a risk assessment and was put in place. There are certain things I now don’t do to make it easier for me, anytime I can’t cope I just have to say. This is how it should be, we didn’t ask for ms but ask to be treated with a little more care and respect. Angie 
Thank you both for your reply and thoughts. It is so frustrating, they just told me they were moving me, no discussion! whats odd is they’re happy for me to run their Art club after school for them, where i’m in charge of 10 kids completely on my own. However i’m not allowed to be in the nursery, except once a week, where I do a intervention group (not taking the kids to another room, in the actual nursery).
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I’m so sorry you have experienced this. I hope that with advice from the correct people, and maybe OH you can get something sorted out It sounds like you really love your role in the classroom. I have the opposite problem - im a teacher and my headteacher won’t make any changes to help me without a fight! I hope things change for the better soon for you x