A MUM has won a £23,000 payout after she was demoted while caring for her premature baby.
Mum-of-two Dr Katie Lidster, 38, was awarded the money after winning a case against UK Research and Innovation.
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Dr Lidster worked for UKRI for seven years before going on maternity leave to have her second daughter Daisy, who was born two months early and very underweight.
She had been based in Devon for most of the time she worked for UKRI, travelling to the London office once a week.
Due to Daisy’s complications at birth, she was delivered by caesarean section and spent 53 weeks in neonatal care being fed through a tube.
Seven months after Daisy’s birth Dr Lidster asked her employer about returning to work, as she had done after the birth of her first child.
She had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder but was seeing a counsellor and said she felt positive.
Dr Lidster told the Mirror: “I have always been very career-focused. I could be a mum and do this at the same time.
“I was excited to start making plans about my return to work and, in particular, a return to a sense of normality following a tough six months.”
However, she was told over the phone by her manager that she would be unable to go back to her old job.
She was offered a four-days-a-week position with less responsibilities and told that her old job didn’t exist any more.
Just weeks later Dr Lidster found a role was being advertised internally that was almost exactly the same as her old job.
She said: “They had added one word to the job description and one responsibility, which I had been doing anyway.”
Dr Lidster, who has degrees from Edinburgh University, King’s College London and Queen Mary University of London, quit her job in December.
UKRI admitted culpability at an employment tribunal hearing in Bristol.
The company was told to pay £23,000 plus interest in damages.
The judge pointed out that her employer was aware that Dr Lidster was unwell.
Dr Lidster said: “”At the time I didn’t realise how long the whole process would take. They had taken my career away from me so I had no option but to fight for justice.”
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