BY LUCY CAULKETT
A 25 year old mum was evicted from Grays Job Centre for breastfeeding her daughter there Rachel Bridson was feeding her 13-week-old daughter Amber, in a corner of the centre when she was asked by a security guard to leave.
Mrs Bridson, from South Ockendon told The eye of media “I was sitting downstairs with my little baby and she started moaning because she was hungry and tired. I covered up myself up fairly discretly with a blanket and started breast feeding her.
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“A security guard came over and said, ‘it’s against our policy, you can’t do that in here’.
“I said under the law you could breast feed anywhere, besides you couldn’t see anything.”
Mrs Bridson said the security guard informed a female member of staff, who also told her to leave the premises, leaving her fuming.
AGGRIEVED
An aggrieved Mrs Bridson told The eye of media that this was not the first time she has been “told off” by Grays Job Centre staff for feeding her child. Two years ago, whilst attending attending a back-to-work session with her husband two years ago, Mrs Bridson said she was surprised to be told, “Your son is too old to be breastfed now. You are not allowed to feed at that age”.
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The Job Centre manager has since called to apologise for the latest incident, but this is not good enough. It is terrible for job centre staff not to be well acquainted with the law enough to make the right decisions. Job centre staff in many parts of the country are generally perceived to be incompetent and lacking in knowledge, which questions the quality of the staff generally hired by job centres.
“I was so angry and felt discriminated against, mrs Bridson fumed. They behaved like they were against mothers, against breastfeeding, I knew In was right because I know the law.
“The new manager did call me up to say she was so sorry and that the member of staff was facing disciplinary action. I think it is shocking this can happen in this day and age, that staff will not know mothers have rights.
Strangely enough, many job centre staff are hired based on their connections-who they know not what they know. One job centre staff who did not want to be named whose friend brought this story to our attention told The eye of media ” Senior staff are generally fairly intelligent, but the lower down the ranks one goes the more shocking the level of ignorance and pride among many job centre staff right across the country. It is truly unbelievable that they would not know that a mother has the right to feed her baby at a job centre”.
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