If you’ve been following our tweets over the last couple of weeks, you’ll have seen that we’ve hinted on a few occasions that life as a police officer or staff member with an autism spectrum condition isn’t always easy.
I wanted to show what “not easy” means by describing the experiences of one of our police staff members, who wishes to remain anonymous. I’ll refer to her as Rachel.
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Rachel works as a data analyst in an open-plan office with other civilian staff. She has dyslexia and also believes that she is on the autistic spectrum, although this hasn’t yet been diagnosed.
Rachel’s problems started when she sometimes misunderstood things said to her by work colleagues, for instance responding to “You alright?” literally rather than taking it to mean “hello”. This led to negative comments being made to her manager, who then challenged Rachel for her “rudeness”. Rachel was also sensitive to sounds – a typical ASC trait – and had taken to wearing headphones when she was working to block out the background noise from the office. This led to more complaints from colleagues, as they felt uncomfortable not being able attract Rachel’s attention when they needed to speak to her.
After a further meeting with managers, Rachel was referred to Occupational Health, who suggested that she explain her difficulties to her work colleagues to avoid further ‘misunderstandings’. Following this, Rachel’s line managers decided that her colleagues should be informed of her needs at a staff meeting. Rachel was given the choice of standing up and telling her colleagues herself, or her line manager doing it for her. Rachel found this embarrassing and humiliating – she had thought that she would just need to talk to the people who had raised issues about her, not the whole office. Rachel asked to use Powerpoint software to help her through her “presentation”, but her line manager would not agree to this.
On the day of the meeting, Rachel did her best to explain herself to the 30 or so staff present. Another line manager from a different department spoke up for her and told Rachel’s colleagues that she was describing the symptoms of autism, and that it was not easy for her. After this, Rachel found that her work colleagues were noticeably more understanding towards her, with several coming up to her afterwards to sympathise.
Things continued to improve for Rachel when she moved to work under the line manager who had spoken up for her at the staff meeting. She was offered coloured screens and notebooks to help with her dyslexia, and her Force even offered to fund noise-cancelling headphones, although these turned out not to be suitable (other people complained about being able to hear Rachel’s music) and could not be replaced with an alternative model due to the Force being tied to an approved supplier.
Rachel eventually took a dyslexia test, however this turned out to be inconclusive, which surprised her as she had been diagnosed as dyslexic at school. Word of the test results spread around the office, and Rachel found herself the victim of gossip that she was a “drama queen” and exaggerating her symptoms.
Rachel has since moved to a different line manager, although her previous manager still helps her with problems at work. She has secured permission to take flexi-time to meet with her partner, who works in the same department and also has Asperger syndrome, for 10-15 minutes each day in the lunch room to give each other some support. They used to have a chat at Rachel’s desk, however colleagues complained that this was “too noticeable”, so the arrangement had to be formalised. Given that other staff often strike up conversations in the office, Rachel and her partner feel that it’s unfair that they have to use their flexi-time to talk to each other.
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When I first heard this story, I felt pretty shocked that something like this could happen in 2015, let alone in a police force which prides itself on its respect and understanding of diversity issues. How could a manager show such ignorance towards disabilities and humiliate a member of staff in an effort to make them “fit in”? Unfortunately, too often “diversity” in the police service seems to be limited to BME (black and minority ethnic) issues affecting the public. In terms of our understanding of disability issues – particularly those affecting staff – we still have a long way to go.
In the meantime, one of the aims of the NPAA is for every Force to have autism lead Federation and Unison reps to assist with autism-related employment issues. After reading this blog, hopefully you will see why we need this in place.