A social worker from Wrexham has been removed from the Register of Social Care Workers after a hearing found her fitness to practise is currently impaired because of poor performance and serious misconduct.
Emma Lennard was working for a fostering agency when she was accused of failing to reach the performance level required in her role between March 2018 and June 2018 by failing to properly record the work she carried out and failing to communicate openly with managers.
The hearing was told that after being dismissed from her role, Ms Lennard was engaged by an adoption agency between July 2018 and February 2019 where she failed to complete and submit multiple reports by their deadlines.
The panel was told that Ms Lennard also failed to properly follow data protection rules and lied about it to her managers. She also failed to tell her employer she had been referred to us for investigation after being dismissed from the fostering agency.
Appearing before the panel, Ms Lennard admitted some of the facts and accepted she should have behaved differently.
After considering the evidence, the panel found the charges proved, concluding that Ms Lennard acted in a way that was dishonest, lacked integrity and fell short of the standards set out in the 'Code of Professional Practise for Social Care'.
The panel therefore decided that Ms Lennard’s fitness to practise was currently impaired because of deficient performance and serious misconduct.
Explaining its decision, the panel said: “We have found that Ms Lennard’s conduct forms part of a pattern of improper practice. It is not an isolated incident and we are not confident that it will not happen again.
“Ms Lennard herself admits in evidence that she doesn’t feel confident she can keep up with the expectations of the role which are too high and there is a possibility of the same thing happening again.”
The panel continued: “In light of our finding that Ms Lennard was dishonest we do not consider that her integrity can be relied upon and by being dishonest she has breached a fundamental tenet of the social care profession.
“We also consider that public confidence in the social care profession would be undermined if a finding of impairment was not made.”
The panel decided to remove Ms Lennard from the Register, saying: “We find that Ms Lennard’s behaviour is fundamentally incompatible with being a registered person thereby warranting the imposition of a Removal Order.”
The three-day remote hearing took place over Zoom on 14 to 16 December 2020.