Miss Blessing Nnona v Home from Home Care Limited — 2025

Miss Blessing Nnona worked for Home from Home Care Limited as a Personal Support Worker from 27 June 2022 until 29 December 2022. The tribunal found that on 11 December 2022, during an incident involving resident J, J grabbed the claimant's necklace and the claimant then put her hand around J's neck. The tribunal accepted that she did not do this maliciously, but found the response was contrary to her NAPPI training and not reasonable or proportionate. The claimant was moved to another care home for the rest of the shift, later dismissed for gross misconduct on 29 December 2022, and her appeal was not upheld on 8 February 2023.

The unfair dismissal complaint was brought as an automatic unfair dismissal claim under s.100(1)(e) ERA 1996 because the claimant did not have two years' service. The tribunal found insufficient evidence that the reason or principal reason for dismissal was that she had taken appropriate steps to protect herself or a service user from serious and imminent danger. It held that the steps she took were not appropriate because placing a hand around J's neck was disproportionate and contrary to the training and policies in place. The tribunal therefore dismissed the unfair dismissal claim.

On the race discrimination claim, the claimant relied on her ethnicity as a Black African worker. The tribunal accepted that the Respondent investigated the events of 11 December 2022 and that this amounted to less favourable treatment, but it found that the treatment was because of the incident with J and not because of race. It rejected Lillie Cram as an appropriate comparator, found that her comment about not wanting the claimant back was not racially discriminatory, and in any event it was made after the investigation had already started. The tribunal also found there was no suspension in the formal sense, and that the claimant was kept away from the Oaks Care Home because the matter was serious and being investigated. It concluded that race played no part in the dismissal and dismissed the claim in full.