An adult care home manager from Newport has been removed from the Register of Social Care Workers after a Social Care Wales hearing found her fitness to practise is currently impaired because of her criminal conviction.
The hearing heard that Ms Hughes had been working as an adult care home manager in 2018 when she was accused of stealing money from the residents in her care.
Ms Hughes used credit cards belonging to vulnerable residents, took out large sums of money and covered this up by entering false account entries.
Ms Hughes was convicted at Cardiff Crown Court of theft and fraud and was sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment, suspended for two years.
After considering the evidence, the Social Care Wales hearing found all charges proved, concluding that Ms Hughes acted in a way that was dishonest, lacked integrity and was an abuse of the trust placed in her as a registered care professional.
The panel explained its decision: “Ms Hughes misappropriated very significant sums of money over the course of many years and used that money as though it were her own. Vulnerable residents were callously and calculatedly taken advantage of by the individual they ought to be able to trust the most, and to whose charge their welfare had been entrusted. It is difficult to conceive of a more significant breach of trust.
The panel continued: “There is an absence of any expression of regret or remorse in these proceedings. There is, therefore, a palpable lack of insight which, on the evidence before us, continues to this day.”
Concluding its decision, the panel said: “Moreover, there has been, in our judgement, a serious departure from the Code of Professional Practice for Social Care and Ms Hughes’s misconduct has unquestionably undermined public confidence in the social care profession.”
Ms Hughes was neither present nor represented at the streamlined remote hearing which took place over Zoom on 19 November 2020.