‘I felt bullied’ – The staff member’s experience

A former employee of Argyll and Bute HSCP has spoken to the Argyllshire Advertiser about her experiences.

She worked for a number of years supporting adults with learning disabilities and loved her work.

‘The hours were great, the people I supported were fantastic and I knew my job,’ she said.

‘It was very rewarding.’ Then there was a change in management and, she claims, the bullying began.

She says she was treated ‘in a way you wouldn’t do to a dog’. When she was working they would stand beside her ‘snarling’ at her.

She says it got to the stage there wasn’t even a ‘hello’ from colleagues in the morning and her confidence dropped.

She continued: ‘I started questioning everything. I’m usually a very positive person, but I did not enjoy that experience.

‘Nobody should go to work to be insulted.

‘I was crying when I went to bed at night. I was slowly becoming someone I didn’t like, and it affected my family.

‘I had to leave that job.’ She also said that ‘four or five other people’ left in the time she was there because of bullying behaviour.

Senior management, she claims, failed to deal with the situation effectively.

‘This was a place of care, but because senior managers did little to discourage bullying, it actually spread as other staff jumped on the bandwagon.

‘There are guidelines within the HSCP for bullying, but managers were not applying them, so they meant nothing.

‘If people were supported at work it would be so much better for everyone. Happy people give more and can provide a better service.’

Since leaving, she has forged a successful career elsewhere and is content with her life, but the scars remain.