By Charlotte Webster
A social worker has been suspended for nine months after she was found to have kept confidential documents at her home over a period of years.
The formerly employed practitioner from Lincolnshire County Council attempted to dispose of confidential service user documents by giving them to an unauthorised person (Person A) to destroy.
A sitting tribunal found that the nature in which the documents were spread, dating back to 2009 , undermined claims by the social worker that she had only kept papers at home under lock and key.
A Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) tribunal heard that on an unknown date between April 2014 and November 2014 you left confidential service user documents with an unauthorised person (Person B) and/or allowed an unauthorised person (Person B) access to confidential service user documents between April 2014 and November 2014 you left confidential service user documents with an unauthorised person (Person B) and/or allowed an unauthorised person (Person B) access to confidential service user documents.
The woman, whose identity has been withheld, as is the practise with social workers guilty of misconduct, admitted giving some of the documents to her partner to shred. She attempted to defend her actions by stating that she was within her rights to trust him because he was also a registered social worker. However, the HCPC panel disagreed, because her partner was not authorised to handle the material and had signed no confidentiality agreements in relation to it. Her several errors reveal a serious lack of knowledge about her job, or a disgraceful level of misconduct.
The woman also broke professional rules by allowing two other people access the documents, in one instance with the objectives of having her partner dispose of them on one occasion.d not adequately She further failed to investigate the behaviour of a child in one case, and did not interview the maternal grandmother and maternal uncle of a service user as expected by the standards of her profession comprising a Social Care Assessment.
SHOCKING
In a catalogue of shocking failings, she informed the police of her suspicion that an individual under her social services had mental health problems, despite having no supporting evidence. She also informed the head of one of the user’s nursery that a child had been abused by her father without obtaining any consent . In another disgraceful conduct of unprofessionalism, she told the teacher of one user of social services that the user and another user had shared the same bed. Adding to all her failings, was the failure to refer a person to family support, as expected by a trained professional social worker.
The tribunal found evidence of misconduct in three other areas of the social worker’s practice, around breaching consent of families she was working with, failing to follow instructions and poor record-keeping.
In imposing the stiff sanction, the panel decided the social worker, despite having shown remorse and completed a piece of reflective work, had only limited insight into her actions.
Police raid
The social worker’s poor practice came to light in October 2015 after a police raid at her home resulting in the arrest of her partner. Confidential documents were recovered during the raid.
Lincolnshire council was later informed that the material had also been retrieved from her partner’s office. Some months later, after the social worker had already left her job, another two carrier bags of “highly confidential” paperwork were recovered from a third individual’s garage. The HCPC came heavy on the social worker’s reflective piece – in which she observed that, “fortunately”, the papers had never come into the public domain – as indicating that she had failed to learn from her mistakes.
“The panel concluded that this comment strongly indicated that any learning the registrant had acquired as a result of attending the course was not embedded, as the documents were in the public domain,” the tribunal judgment said. “[She] appeared to believe that because she knew the individuals who had been given access to the documents, they were not members of the public.”The tribunal found that although the social worker’s actions had caused no direct harm to children and families involved with Lincolnshire council, the breaches were liable to damage trust in the social work profession.
DEFLECTION
The panel also criticised attempts by the woman “to deflect at least some of the blame onto the council, on the basis that the lapses in her practice would not have happened if she had been properly supported and not allocated an excessive caseload”.
They concluded that while she was busy, the social worker’s caseload was appropriate for a social worker of her level of experience.
“The registrant’s focus in this hearing has been to blame her conduct on the pressures of work caused by management,” the judgment said. “She did not focus on her own shortcomings.” The tribunal subsequently imposed a nine-month suspension, stating that the period was “the minimum necessary to reflect the nature and gravity of the registrant’s misconduct, and to declare and uphold the standards expected of a registered social worker”.
The social worker was asked to complete a further reflective piece of work, to demonstrate insight into her practice failings, before returning to work. The findings are quite alarming and show how easy it is for social workers to flout the rules and standards they are bound to follow. If the woman’s failings were not as severe, it is quite possible they may never have come to light.
A spokesperson from the HCPC told The Eye Of Media.Com: ”social work can be a demanding profession,, but the vast majority of social workers are trained to execute their duties professionally, with due diligence, and the utmost level of professionalism required. From time to time, social workers are found falling short of those standards, and will face a disciplinary hearing with punitive measures deemed appropriate. This does not take away from the overwhelming number of social workers who execute their duties properly under sometimes challenging circumstances.