By Gavin Mackintosh And James Simons
A social worker who was “overwhelmed” by too much workload has been cautioned by the HCPC for failing to admit she was struggling.
A conduct committee found the social worker- also a team manager in children’s services moved a disabled child into a foster placement without following procedures of first arranging a placement planning meeting. The social worker also failed to ensure visits were carried out to service users in two high-risk cases that needed urgent action.
The HCPC panel concluded that it amounted to misconduct and cautioned the social worker, instead of disciplining her.
The social worker said the pressures and staff shortages in her team had left her social workers “fire-fighting”.
Overload in social services has become a regular feature of alarming failings in social services, but no excuse is acceptable for failing to follow procedures. The decision to caution the social worker is not good enough.
Efforts by the eye of media.com to identify the social worker or the council where she works were blocked by HCPC insiders who said they prefer to protect the identity of social workers who fall short of standards because ”it can damage the morale of social workers and people prospective social workers off from joining the profession”.
However, the HCPC are happy to make the findings of their investigation public, when approached, without going out of their way to expose failing social workers.
The failure to carry out visits to service users in high-risk cases that required urgent action is unforgivable. Social workers cannot be so overloaded that they are unable to carry out visits in high-risk cases, nor delegate this to other social services. The failure of this case is so serious that a caution is not good enough. The report by the panel read:
“The registrant was overwhelmed by the work and was not coping. She was working long hours, including evenings and weekends. The registrant was carrying out case work which would not normally be carried out by a manager. She now acknowledges the hours she worked were not healthy” the judgment said.
However, the panel said the social worker did not communicate fully to her managers the extent of the difficulties she was facing and instead “made efforts to deflect any impression that she was not coping”.
“Her focus was to ask for more resources for the team,” the panel said. It was not until the social worker had been in place for more than a year that she shared concerns about the safety of children, the panel said.
“Even then, she did not highlight either orally or in writing any specific cases that were of particular concern,” the panel added, these included cases where she made alleged failings.
Short Staff
The eye of media.com also heard that social workers team at one point went from having 7 members to having 4 members, leaving many cases unallocated to social workers. The consequence was that as team manager, she had up to 40 unallocated cases in her name in line with her local authority’s policy.
The number of unallocated cases is shocking and calls for urgent action in the regulation of social services. Social services have always believed they can regulate themselves, but their failure is so extreme that it leads to serious cause for concern.
Justifying the reason for not taking more serious action against the social worker in question, the HCPC panel said the staff shortages and high workload of the social worker’s team were the most important “mitigating factors” when considering her conduct.
The mitigating circumstances did not change the view of the HCPC panel that the social worker should have prioritised visits in two cases due to the high level of risk, adding that not all of the cases could be allocated” to social workers in her team.
However, the HCPC fell short of stating which team the cases could have been allocated to. The panel stressed that
“it is an essential requirement for a social worker in a management position to prioritise the cases involving the highest level of risk,” the panel said.
Deterrent
The HCPC panel said it had not applied stricter disciplinary measures against the social worker because the chances of repetition were small.
A member of the panel told the eye of media.com that suspending the social worker or sanctioning her would not have been necessary or proportionate to her offence. ”The social worker had claimed to enjoy her job very much and had never before this committed any failings in the job which she had done for a long period of time”.
But the panel said it was concerned the social worker had not “demonstrated full insight” into her shortcomings.
“The panel was concerned that, while the registrant agreed that she should have acted differently, she did not accept personal culpability in respect of any of the particulars. She denied that any of the particulars amounted to misconduct,” the report said.
The report also read :“In her answers ,she placed great emphasis on the mitigating factors, to the extent that she was suggesting that they exonerated her from wrongdoing.” The eye of media.com believes that failure to admit her failings should have at least resulted in a fine against the team leader.
The social worker has since changed jobs and went on record saying she would not wish to work as a manager again.She said the problems she had as a team leader had affected her confidence and health.
”Social work can be very challenging, the eye of media.com was told, and it is not in the best interest of the profession to scare people away from the profession.
Proportionate responses are the best way forward”.
Negligible
Reflecting the overall panel’s take on the case, their report said:
The risk of her repeating the failings was “negligible”, a three-year caution order was the best option to maintain confidence in the profession and act as a “deterrent” to other social workers.
“This is not a case where the lapse can be described as isolated, limited or relatively minor in nature. However, in the panel’s judgment, it is a case where meaningful conditions of practice cannot be imposed and suspension from practice would be disproportionate,” the panel said.
“This is a case where the risk of repetition is low and the conduct is out of character. In the context of the registrant’s long career, the misconduct occurred over a relatively short period of time. The Panel considered carefully whether the level of the registrant’s insight was sufficient to impose a caution order.
“The panel has made a clear finding that its concern about the level of the Registrant’s insight does not have implications for the registrant’s work as a social worker and that there are no public protection concerns in this case. The panel decided that the Registrant has a sufficient level of insight for consideration of a caution order.”
Light
The disciplinary action was too light and the eye of media.com will be looking into this case and its handling further. The handling by the HCPC must be evaluated more, and we will be raising it further with our editorial, other regulators, and some members of the press.
The failings here were too severe and the disciplinary action too mild. More importantly, the issue of case workload needs to be addressed and rectified once and for all.