I just emailed the employer that dismissed me. Please see attached:

Hello,

I worked for you for a couple of years and was dismissed over a year ago. Don’t worry, I am doing OK now, have a job, also in care, that doesn’t puts me in unnecessary stress and where hazards have been virtually eliminated and I really appreciate that.

I also started blogging shortly after I got dismissed, which I also enjoy a lot and I am actually really grateful that you got rid of me because I’d never find the confidence to leave and look for a better life.

When I started blogging I decided not to discuss on the blog the issues I experience in social care because I was aware issues are everywhere and taking care of people with complex needs is not easy.

However, seeing how different things are in my new workplace made me realise I have to speak up so that other people could also benefit from my breakthrough.

As I am autistic I sometimes misinterpret things and may see them either better than they are or worse; therefore I’m contacting you to give you the opportunity to reflect on that.
I didn’t put your company name on the blog because, you know, I don’t have ‘enough evidence’, but I’m also aware that the head office never gets notified of certain issues like, for example, resident with prada willi syndrome who got put on a diet even though he wasn’t obese, just overweight, and he got so obsessed with food as a result that he ate raw chicken.

But you know what, if you created a system that makes people unwilling to report, that is not my fault, is it?
Also I am aware that you ‘put in place’ the See Something Say Something thing. So let me tell you how it works…
I used to work in Reading in XX, that home that got shut down in 2014. I had some concerns that I never properly addressed, I was just mentioning them, but you know, I didn’t have a lot of experience at that time so I was lacking confidence to trust my judgement.
As we were going through those numerous inspections, we got a visit by some higher ups from head office. They talked to me and I admitted I was trying to bring management’s attention to the issues before they got really bad and that was being constantly dismissed. And they told me: why didn’t you contact anyone above? You have talk about those things because if you don’t, we don’t know and can’t do anything to solve them. They seemed very serious and genuine and I had to admit I made a mistake.

Shortly after I moved to Swindon and started working in YY. It was so much nicer, almost no issues and they even had decaf coffee and tea! I really enjoyed it initially. But with time I realised there are issues there too, just different ones.

But I still remembered that conversation that I had with those higher ups. I thought that I have to report issues to prevent that place from going the same route that Christchurch Gardens did. So once, when the manager decided a minor incident doesn’t need to be reported, I emailed the 4-S line. And guess what happened? Initially nothing, I didn’t get no reaction at all. On my next supervision, however, the manager seemed to be quite abrupt with me, which I didn’t really pay much attention to as she was getting moody quite often anyway, but at the end of it she said those words: she’s not going to tolerate me talking about her behind her back.
That’s how your 4-Shit system works. And you dealt with this in confidence, as promised, because I never got told anything directly. So it was in confidence.

Anyway, I still have some trust in you, you know? Possibly if you realised that what the care system needs is to define new type of widespread abuse – ‘social perception abuse’ where people are using their social understanding while making decisions, you will start seeing things differently and that will solve the problem.

I wrote this post that may be of your interest:
https://autisticandme.com/2022/09/05/social-perception-abuse-who-do-i-have-to-forgive/

As I said I didn’t include company name, but I guess if people make some effort they’ll find out. Anyway, we have to talk about those things openly, don’t we? Because otherwise things will never change. And would you want your ‘people you support’ or however you call them now to experience those issues? I’m sure you wouldn’t, so look at it this way: I’m helping you to get to where you need to be.

I’m not just including facts in my post but also my personal opinions – but opinion is needed for people to understand what they are not getting, and that’s why it’s important.

ALERT:

Please do not respond to this email. I know very well what talking to non autistic people about issues is like. We call it ‘beating foam’ in Polish and I think it’s a great idiom. Because your words became like bubbles in a bath: there’s loads of them and they look soft and fluffy but if you poke it, they will disappear and they will be nothing there of a substance at all.

That’s this one post for now but there’s more too come.

I don’t really know how to finish this email but please rest assured, I have a lot of hopes. I don’t know how you want to react to that (please refer back to the ALERT paragraph) but perhaps… see you on the blog?

Kind Regards

Magda Regula

(The Naive One)

We reached the end of the email and now I’m going to need to make an important disclosure: I really do not want to sound like I’m blaming everything on White British. It would not be fair. We, people from Eastern Europe have issues too! The ‘obsessed with diet’ manager was actually from Czech Republic. Also, her own diet was terrible – she barely ate any proper food at all. She’d have one spoonful of porridge for breakfast, undressed salad for lunch and a spoonful of curry for dinner. Apart from that she’d eat cakes, biscuits, chocolates and ice cream. She was almost as tall as me but size 8 so she was very lucky that she wasn’t putting on weight with this diet, she was also very proud of that and would make you aware of that like if it was an achievement. Mind you, her skin was really bad and she was also complaining of low energy. She said she had an awareness that’s probably due to her diet but she’s unable to do anything about it as she’s addicted to sugar.

So it was ok for her to make unhealthy choices but she denied that right to a disabled man that was unable to advocate for himself.

There’s still more to come…