Confidential information

Last week, a long running Social Work England fitness to practice hearing finally ended.

Almost 5 years after the original fitness to practice referral was made to the HCPC, and after a hearing spanning 8 days over 5 months, the social worker received the outcome in this case - a 12 month warning order.

The social worker had used their personal email address to support their work contrary to local authority policy, had received court reports from colleagues in other local authorities to their personal email address and had sent themselves a large amount of confidential service user information to be used in employment tribunal proceedings against the employer.

The panel found that although the social worker was not likely to repeat their conduct, the upholding of proper standards in the profession meant a sanction had to be imposed - in this case the lowest sanction available.

Bizarrely, even whilst doing so, the panel found that the horrific delay in concluding the proceedings was not a mitigating factor - they were completely wrong about this, as case law makes quite clear.

However, realistically our client could not have done any better in this case, so the panel have avoided an appeal and the social worker can move on with their life.