Teaching assistant wins £7,000 after she was unfairly sacked for hugging a young pupil with special needs to calm him down and ‘ambushed’ with unsubstantiated claim she kissed him on the cheek
- Teaching assistant, Sabrina Willmott, lost her job for giving a young pupil a hug
- While at a Bedfordshire school, she tried to calm down a boy with special needs
- She was awarded over £7,000 by a judge for being unfairly dismissed in 2020
A teaching assistant has won more than £7,000 after she was unfairly sacked for giving a young pupil a hug while trying to calm him down.
Sabrina Willmott was judged to have ‘abused her position of trust’ by embracing a child with special needs, when she thought he was going to have a physical outburst.
She was later alleged to have also kissed the nursery age pupil, an employment tribunal heard.
Although she denied this allegation she was still sacked for gross misconduct.
Teaching assistant Sabrina Willmott, who was sacked from her job at Whitefield Primary Academy (pictured) in 2020 for hugging a pupil to calm them down, was awarded £7,257.18 by a judge who ruled she had been unfairly dismissed
At a tribunal held in Watford (pictured), a judge said Mrs Willmott should have been ‘wary’ of inviting a hug but that her actions did not amount to gross misconduct
Her former employers Pioneer Learning Trust have now been ordered to pay Mrs Willmott £7,257.18 in compensation after she won a case of unfair dismissal.
The tribunal, held in Watford, heard Mrs Willmott started working as a level one teaching assistant at Whitefield Primary Academy in Luton, Bedfordshire, in January 2016.
In October 2019 she was assigned to a child in the school’s nursery who required support form a teaching assistant because of his special needs.
In January 2020, as a result of the pupil’s behaviour, the nursery teachers asked that he be removed from the main room to the separate ‘Nest’ room to be supervised. Mrs Willmott was asked to continue to work with the child in the ‘Nest’.
The tribunal heard that, two days later, Mrs Willmott asked the child to do something and he ‘reacted badly’ to this request.
She said she was concerned he was going to physically harm himself and then ‘placed her arms around him in a hug to prevent a physical outburst to intervene before an outburst commenced’.
Mrs Willmott was signed off from work by her GP for acute stress following the allegations she kissed a child (stock photo)
The following Monday, a meeting was called after a local authority safeguarding officer raised concerns about the hugging incident.
Mrs Willmott was told an allegation had been made against her that she had behaved ‘inappropriately towards the child by hugging him and kissing him’.
She ‘strongly and vehemently denied’ that she had kissed the child but admitted embracing him, adding she had hugged the child ‘to calm him down because he was really upset’.
The tribunal heard Mrs Willmott was ‘very distressed’ by the allegation of kissing because of the ‘very serious ramifications’ it could lead to. As a result, she was signed off work by her GP with acute stress.
In February 2020 another teaching assistant, told bosses she saw Mrs Willmott get on her knees, put the pupil’s coat on, talk to him, do up his coat and give him a kiss on the right cheek.
The witness said that she did not see anything else and added Mrs Willmott was ‘very touchy-feely’ and that it was usual for her to ‘cuddle’ the child.
A disciplinary meeting was held over Zoom in July 2020 to hear allegations of gross misconduct, but the kissing allegation against Mrs Willomott was dropped due to insufficient evidence.
However, she was still sacked.
In the letter confirming her dismissal, it was stated that it was ‘the responsibility of all staff to ensure that they did not abuse or appear to abuse their position of trust and extend relationships beyond what was considered to be professional and acceptable’.
But Employment Judge Bellamy Forde ruled the hugging incident did not amount to gross misconduct.
He said: ‘I accept that it is likely that [Mrs Willmott] should have been wary of inviting the child for a hug and that [she] was aware of the risks associated with doing this.
‘I do not accept that hugging would always amount to gross misconduct…accordingly, I find that [Mrs Willmott] was unfairly dismissed.’
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