Dale Morgan. My Story, My Victory. Part 1

Dale Morgan

I want to start this article thanking Anna Kennedy for giving me the opportunity to discuss my experiences over the last few years. When I first started on this journey, I never imagined that it would gather the amount of interest and support that it has and I am extremely grateful for being given this opportunity.

Let me start at the beginning. In January of 2009 I discovered that a long-running temporary position with the NHS would be coming to an end. As any employee would do with that knowledge, I immediately started looking for other jobs. Given my familiarity with the structure of the NHS, I inevitably started with internal vacancies. I was assured by my manager at the time (who shall be referred only as JC) that I would receive an excellent reference. To my delight I was offered an interview – at which I discussed my skills, my history, and also the difficulties that having Asperger’s can cause (both in general life and in employment). I was then offered a job, subject to references. Fantastic! I’d been assured my references would be excellent and I was really looking forward to commencing my new position.

Unfortunately, I’d been lied to by JC.

Without warning or explanation, my job offer was withdrawn upon receipt of my references. The day that I was due to attend an Occupation Health assessment to determine reasonable adjustments, I received a letter in the mail simply stating that the offer had been withdrawn. No explanation was given. In the hope that it was a simple error, I attended the OH assessment anyway and was declared fit to work subject to some minor adjustments. I communicated this to the PCT to no avail. They weren’t interested. I wrote to them, asking why they had made their decision. They simply said that a reference had been unsatisfactory. This left me baffled – after all, I had been told I would receive excellent references. So I requested copies of the references, and it was at this point that I finally learned how discriminatory society can be sometimes.

“Poor social skills”, JC said.

“Performance declined as emotional health declined”, JC said – ignoring the fact that she had not made any reasonable adjustments despite knowing I was on the spectrum, which led to stress.

“Did not establish good relationships” she said again – another reference to social skills.

And those are just a few examples.

The more I read her reference, the more it was apparent to me that she was criticising me purely on the basis of being on the Autistic Spectrum. And it hurt. It hurt not just that she would say those things, but that someone in the NHS, of all places, would read that, knowing full well that I am on the spectrum, knowing full well what difficulties I had because I had told them, and not disregard such blatant criticisms about someone’s medical condition without first considering adjustments – especially when it had been discussed extensively prior to being offered the job in the first place.

So I wrote letters. I made phone calls. I did everything I could to try and open a dialogue. In a phonecall to one of the people who interviewed me I explicitly asked why the offer had been withdrawn. “It’s because of your disability”, I was told. When I mentioned that was discrimination, the call was abruptly terminated.

That one sentence hit me like a bombshell. It’s a sentence that many people dread hearing; one that is becoming more uncommon but which still, sadly, will be familiar to many people simply trying to live their life and fit in. For a few minutes I just sat in silence, not sure what to do.  But that shock quickly gave way to anger and a determination not to simply give up. I contacted the Equality and Human Rights Commission and went over everything that had happened. They immediately told me to write back to the NHS, confirming the details of the telephone conversation and informed me of the various options open to me. It was then that I started to realise that the NHS weren’t going to speak reasonably to me and that, in order to see some form of justice, I would need to enter into legal proceedings.

I wrote to the NHS again, confirming the telephone conversation I had had with them and again asking them to reconsider their decision. I don’t think more than three hours had elapsed between speaking to my interviewer on the phone and posting the letter. After two weeks I had not received a response, so I moved on to the next bit of advice the EHRC had given me – to submit a form called a DL56. This form is effectively a formal demand that questions be answered. It is the final resort before opening legal proceedings and failure to respond to it within a timely period can count against the receiving party should legal proceedings begin. In this form, I asked a few simple questions – basically reiterating events so far and asking if they accepted my version of events, and also asking if they accepted that they discriminated and would reconsider their decision. I sent the form off and expected a fast reply; unfortunately a reply never came and I found myself finally having to make one of the hardest decisions of my life. Did I give up, accept that I had lost, and move on? Or do I continue to fight this discrimination and file a claim with the Employment Tribunal? I have to admit that I was very tempted to simply give up – I am sure a lot of people in similar situations feel the same way. But then what good would have come from that? The way to fight inequality isn’t to ignore it and simply hope it will go away. We will never be treated with respect and understanding unless we fight for it. We shouldn’t have to, but it’s unfortunately true.