Did employer have to accommodate a client services coordinator because of her caregiving responsibilities?
A healthcare employer let an employee work from home successfully for months while she cared for a son in crisis. Then, instead of continuing that arrangement, it cut her hours, a move that an Ontario arbitrator has ruled discriminatory.
In a decision dated April 15, 2026, arbitrator Elaine Newman found that Carefor Health and Community Services discriminated against a client services coordinator because of her caregiving responsibilities as a parent when it unilaterally moved her to part-time hours, cutting 10 paid hours a week from her schedule.
Newman ordered the employer to pay $15,000 in damages and restore the worker's lost pay, vacation, sick time and pension credits, while dismissing a related claim that the move was retaliation.
Remote arrangement succeeds
The worker held a front-line scheduling role at the healthcare employer, coordinating service delivery for community clients who are often seniors living alone. She worked from home three days a week and from the office two days under a standing policy. When her son, who lives with autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), went through a mental health crisis and stopped attending school, she asked to work from home full time to look after him.
With medical paperwork in hand, the employer approved the request, along with the option of an unpaid leave, and the arrangement continued for months without a hitch. During a recorded meeting in that period, her manager praised how she was handling the remote schedule and said the employer wanted to keep supporting her while her son's situation settled down.
By February 2025, her son's return to school had stalled, so the worker asked to do part of her afternoon shift from home on the days she came into the office, so she could be there when he got home from school.
That request, not the earlier full remote arrangement, became the subject of the grievance.
'Working and providing childcare’
A doctor's note about the worker's own health, meant to support her request, instead left the employer unsure whether the issue was her son's needs or her own. It then asked for more medical details, including whether she could safely do her job while looking after her son.
At a meeting that February, her manager doubted she could balance work with watching her son from 2 p.m. to the end of her shift, despite having praised her remote work just two months earlier. According to the arbitrator's account of the employer's evidence, one manager said, “We can’t have employees working and providing childcare.”
Instead of the two-hour accommodation she had proposed, the employer moved her to part-time hours on its own, working 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., five days a week. That cut 10 paid hours from her schedule, closed off overtime and weekend shifts, and slowed how much vacation, sick time and pension she could build up.
Financial burden for employee
Newman found the employer's decision rested on unproven assumptions about her son's needs and her ability to manage them, despite months of evidence that she had handled the arrangement well. As Newman put it, the move “targeted the grievor and imposed a financial burden” that was not placed on any other employee in the workplace.
The employer argued she should have looked into other childcare options before making the request. She didn't need to, Newman found: medical advice warned that any change in her son's routine could set back his recovery, and she would have met an even stricter test had one applied.
The award included full restoration of the worker's lost pay and benefits. She dismissed the retaliation claim, finding no evidence of malicious intent despite testimony that coworkers had come to treat her as a “pariah” after she was moved to part-time. Her return to work was scheduled for April 2026, under a different supervisor.
