Social worker’s confidentiality-rap reprieve

A SOCIAL worker rapped for failing to respect client confidentiality after she misdialled a telephone number has had the sanction overturned by a tribunal.

Roselyn Thompson, who worked for Oldham Council between March and September, 2009, and as an intervention keyworker with the Rathbone charity, was given an 18-month “admonishment” in March, this year, for two episodes of misconduct.

The sanction was imposed by the General Social Care Council after an incident in February, 2008, when Ms Thompson accidentally misdialled a client’s number and spoke to a child at her school, “causing her to be upset.”

When the child’s mother telephoned Ms Thompson to complain, the social worker revealed the number she had meant to dial — allegedly breaching her client’s confidentiality in the process. Then working for Oldham Council, Ms Thompson was suspended over that incident.

The second episode happened in August, 2009, while Ms Thompson was working for Rathbone. She was said to have driven a client to Moss Side in breach of the charity’s “safeguarding policy”.

Ms Thompson, who was dismissed over that incident in September, 2009, appealed against the admonishment, which she claimed was out of proportion to two “relatively minor” transgressions.

The First Tier Tribunal’s Health Education and Social Care Chamber said the misconduct was “at the lower end of the scale of seriousness”.