Social worker failed 22 vulnerable kids
A SOCIAL worker has been struck off after failing 22 vulnerable children.
Mhairi Thomson let down children over two years, including those who said they had been sexually abused, were at risk of violence at home or lived with drug addicted parents.
The former social worker, who worked for Renfrewshire Council’s child and families team in Paisley, made dozens of errors between March 2013 and January 2015.
She was removed from her post in October 2015, but was reinstated in a non-registerable job with the local authority afterwards.
In one case, the children had been abandoned by an alcoholic mother, and several other cases there were issues involving drug taking by parents.
In another two cases, domestic violence was a problem at home and Ms Thomson was responsible for checking on the children’s welfare as they were at risk.
Ms Thomson, who had worked as a social worker since 2006, was found to have failed 22 children over the last two years of her employment.
She appeared before a panel of the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) in Dundee in August, before they decided she had to be struck off.
They found she had failed to visit at-risk children as regularly as required, in some cases every four or six weeks when she was supposed to have visited every fortnight.
She failed to update notes, respond to letters or follow-up on information and in one case she didn’t reinstate contact between a child and their mother despite having been told to by a children’s hearing.
One of the children she was charged with caring for, had been taken to hospital with a burn on his hand and she hadn’t followed this up with the health visitor.
When Glasgow City Council’s social services team wrote to her about a child who was in her caseload who had run away, she failed to do a risk assessment for the girl.
The girl had made allegations of sex abuse against her mother’s partner, and was now back in the family home.
She also didn’t record the outcome of a child protection investigation involving two siblings in case notes.
The SSSC panel decided that Ms Thomson had “shown very limited insight or reflection into the seriousness of your conduct or the possible consequences for vulnerable service users”.
Their report stated she had “sought to blame others for your deficient professional practice” and “made no apology for your failures”.
They also said she had “deprived a parent of access to her children,...this constitutes non-compliance with a court order.”
The panel said: “Our deficient professional practice probably did affect a number of vulnerable service users and had the potential to cause serious harm to vulnerable service users and waste the resources of your employer.
“Your conduct was an abuse of trust.”