A Birmingham charity worker who blew the whistle on a colleague who was sexually abusing a patient has won a tribunal for constructive dismissal after she was forced out by managers.

Edgbaston-based Autism West Midlands was fiercely criticised at the employment tribunal and ordered to pay former team leader Jackie Evans £6,600.

Ms Evans, aged 49, eventually resigned from her job at the Droitwich home after a mobile phone recording showing Nigel Hoskins abusing the woman, who suffered from autism and epilepsy, was sent to authorities.

Hoskins, of Worcester, was jailed for 16 months in August 2009 and ordered to register as a sex offender for 10 years after pleading guilty at Worcester Crown Court to sexual activity with a woman with a mental disorder while acting as her carer.

The tribunal, which heard that Ms Evans had subsequently been “deliberately excluded” from some duties by colleagues, was highly critical of the charity, which employs up to 250 people and has a string of care homes across the region.

The tribunal judgment said: “The tribunal has concluded that Ms Evans was deliberately excluded by her peer Paul Brandon and that the manager Alan Heath connived in or at least condoned that exclusion.

“There was no reasonable and proper cause for this failure of management, it was likely to undermine the relationship of trust, and it did so. This was the last straw which led to Ms Evans’ decision to resign.

“The members of this tribunal have rarely seen as clear a case of constructive unfair dismissal.

“The tribunal found that the evidence presented for Autism West Midlands lacked coherence and credibility.”

Ms Evans, who is now doing agency work in the care sector, said: “I don’t feel particularly brilliant that I have been awarded £6,600. It is not a huge sum and I have lost a job I loved.

“This has knocked my confidence really badly.

‘‘The management should have been championing the whistleblowing. Instead, there was a concerted attack on me; they took responsibilities off me.”

The judgment added: “The evidence of Ms Evans, while lengthy and extending well beyond what was necessary for the disposal of the issues, and inaccurate in points of detail, was essentially truthful and credible.

“The statements of the three witnesses for AWM were terse, failed to address points that were clearly in issue and within the knowledge of the witness, and were on important points factually inaccurate.”

Jonathan Shephard, chief executive of Autism West Midlands, said in a statement, said it was now under a new management team.

He added: “Despite asking for £35,000 and her old job back, the tribunal thought it appropriate to give Ms Evans only £219 compensation plus statutory costs (and only a quarter of the preparation costs she was claiming) and did not feel she should be reinstated in her role.

“Providing excellent care and support to our service users is our number one priority and we have a strong and robust whistleblowing policy which applies to all our staff.

“Ms Evans resigned more than a year ago and since then the home has gone from strength to strength under a new management team.”