“Watchful” has a particular grasp of the issues going on at the Northern Ireland Social Care Council – here is their special page, made “sticky” to the front of Regulator Watch.
It seems that the NISCC is diverging from its stated Business Plan point 1.8 section 1.8.1. In so doing it is evident that the NISCC is failing to ensure that it is properly aligned with the other 3 UK social care regulators on agreed policies and procedures, as it claims to aspire to in its latest business plan. Here in NI registrants have only three potential sanctions when misconduct is found by the NISCC. I have already highlighted the NISCC's evident failure to explicitly consider possible outcomes such as "misconduct not proven" and "misconduct not found" and their apparant view that, when a case progresses to hearing, it can only result in one of three sanctions. Now it seems that in terms of an admonishment outcome in a case the NISCC will always hand down a 5 year term. This is not the case for the GSCC. A look at GSCC conduct hearing outcomes shows that the GSCC can opt for a shorter period such as 6 months or a year or any number of years up to 5. Now if the NISCC is committed to alignment with the other regulators on policies and procedures why on earth are NI registrants in conduct hearings always facing a more punitive sanction from its regulator? The NISCC has a case to answer on its management of how hearings will be concluded. It is patently not aligned with the other regulators, appears from what it says on its site to consider guilty all whose cases progress to hearing and in the end it is choosing to treat NI registrants to a harsher range of sanctions with no evident option of innocence. That is how it appears from what is published on the NISCC site. If it is not the case then the NISCC needs to get its act together and be more clear and specific about how it intends to treat those who come before it. It also has to make demonstrably clear that it intends to comply with the rules of natural justice. So far it has failed to do so.
So the recruitment freeze on jobs in the public sector here is starting to bite even after a major review of spending for the last few years - here in NI that means that social care staff can probably expect no cover for staff off sick and no replacements for staff who leave. It is already happening. Gradually their working conditions will deteriorate and the risk of struggling with workloads will increase. Now the NISCC is there to uphold standards in social care but will it put its money where its mouth is? I doubt it. Staff will have to fight their own battles with their increasingly miserly employers on their own. They would do well to pay heed to the NISCC Codes of Practice and to quote them in supervision when the going gets tough. This will be the reality facing staff struggling to manage with vacant posts around them. The knot will get ever tighter and those who continue to man the decks will face ever greater risks to their livelihoods. The employers won't give a damn and will just feed them to the dogs when the shit hits the fan, as it surely will. They will be referred to the NISCC on the basis of alleged misconduct when something slips through the net. The reality will be that the slip ups will often be directly attributable to job cuts and the pressure on those who remain. People need to be vigilant and remain aware. Put the pressure back on the employer - as already said above use supervision to protect yourselves, quote the codes in it and get it all recorded as it was discussed, write to RQIA to complain and if that doesn't work go sick with stress. That way you will probably have a job to come back to. Failure to heed this may cost you your job. The NISCC will do nothing to help you other than to helpfully tell you that you are responsible for your own work. You have been warned.
I am back again full of "bile" towards the NISCC for its overzealous sanctions policy. I have been checking out other professional regulators' sanctions policies. In the HPC, the Health Professions Council, the regulatory body for staff like Occupational Therapists etc, the sanction that is the same as an NISCC admonishment is known as a caution and can last for any period up to five years but these are not confined to the upper part of the scale like the NISCC sanction. So here we have it - health and social services in Northern Ireland are fully integrated and increasingly so. That means that the conduct of two people working side by side in the same team but in different disciplines face different levels of punishment for potentially the same sort of offence. So not only is the NISCC out of step with its fellow regulators of social care while at the same time aspiring not to be in its business plan, but it seems to stand alone in its excessively draconian sanctions policy. This is totally unacceptable and why should they get away with it? Nobody holds this lot to account. Another thing - sanctions are supposed to be to protect the public not to punish the professional, according to the HPC but the NISCC likes to use the term "admonishment". This word has a punitive connotation like a reproach, a reprimand or say a rebuke. It rhymes with punishment and maybe that's why the NISCC selected it - maybe it appealed to their more draconian inclinations. A "caution" is the preferred word for the same thing by the HPC and it really does sound much more benign and encouraging as if saying "You have made a mistake my good registrant - kindly desist from repeating this for a period of....years" The NISCC version of the same would read more like "You have committed a most grave error unbecoming of a registrant and in consequence you shall be condemned to a statutory minimum of 5 long years' suffering by admonishment". Now that may sound a little draconian of me but you people at the NISCC now know what you have done wrong. It is time to get it right and sort out this sorry mess. I will be watching...
At least the NISCC can't make use of that old sanction of bygone days - banishment. It rhymes with admonishment and punishment and thus might have some appeal. I can hear how the social care worker of yore would have fared if the NISCC had existed then and decided to use this option - " Ye shall be banished to a small island inhabited by savages where ye shall have to forage for sustenance for a minimum of five long years" Now the problem with that is whether said registrant would notice any difference..
I am relaxing now as I have a day off tomorrow before returning to the fray. Maintaining my high standard of conduct and character can take a well earned break for now. I can let go of the shackles of the NISCC and have a little fun. My mind is free from its clutches. It cannot police what I think. Now I think anagrams are quite good fun and I wonder what ones I might be able to come up with for the NISCC. Well sadly there is nothing that springs to mind for that precisely. Now Social Care Council is a different matter. I need to keep my grey matter in good running order to function to NISCC standards after my day off. So what can we make of this jumble of letters I wonder? "Asocial Conic Ulcer" is my best shot after my day's hard travail. Does it make sense? Possibly not but from the current satirical standpoint that I am seeing things from it somehow does...No offence intended NISCC people -you know you need to have a little laugh at yourselves from time to time, such are the burdens of your office.
Our friends at the NISCC are back with their draconian predisposition on full show. The social care workforce in NI is gradually being registered but registration is not yet a legal requirement for all levels of social care workers below social worker. Yet the NISCC is writing out to the employers when some of those pending registrants fail to pay attention to the plan to get them registered. And what does the good old employer do? My sources have told me of at least one instance where a social care worker who failed to register on time was actually sent home by their employer without pay until they got registered. Now if their registration is not yet a legal requirement what the hell are the NISCC and the employers doing basically ignoring the fact and harassing people? I can see that this incompetence and heavy handed approach will end up costing the employer and the taxpayer a substantial amount in compensation. I thought that the employers were about saving money not wasting it by failing to get their facts right. These people are idiots, draconian idiots. I remain cynical to the core and Watchful.....
Keep up the good work Watchful - I agree these people are just arrogant fools who will come a serious cropper one day. I know someone who once had contract work removed because they decided not to “voluntarily” re-register with the GSCC (they do not use the legally protected title “social worker”) and then successfully extracted the full costs of the contract from the employer (contractor) without doing a day’s work – it came to many £several thousands of pounds. Not a bad pay off for doing nothing and a couple of threatening letters mentioning “breach of contract” and “employment tribunal” or “County Court.”
There was no legal basis to require “registration” and besides the formal contract jointly signed had no mention of the GSCC or registration. In sporting terms I think that is Contractor 0 – 2 Consultant, or game set and match.
Just curious Wilt but what do you make of the NISCC's use of a single and extreme length of admonishments (5yrs)? This is tantamount to having a disciplinary warning held on file for that time. Even a final warning for gross misconduct only lasts 2 years. So what the heck are these power crazy idiots doing having in place such an extreme sanction which puts NI registrants at an increased risk of removal on a totting up basis than their counterparts in the GSCC? Why did they decide that this had to last 5 years and why is the sanction not aligned with the other regulators? My guess is that they want to look as if they mean more business than any other regulator. It is all about making themselves feel important and at odds with their aspiration to be aligned in policies and procedures with the other regulators. They only show themselves to be the fools that they are.
Now while I am at times rather critical of our dear old local regulator, by comparison with our not so dear employers here I suspect that they might be relative paragons of virtue. The employers, like most before them have no concept of fair play and behave with spectacular meanness and duplicity, aided and abetted in this by their respective personnel departments. They use every trick in the book to disadvantage staff and to get their way by trying to sideline unions, playing fast and loose with discovery and witness statements in disciplinary proceedings and generally shifting blame onto the poor social care worker wherever possible. It is of course the way with most public sector employers. They get all sanctimonious about social care staff who fail to follow the rules but they break every moral rule in the book and have no compunction in doing so.
My belated reply to your question (post 9 above) is that a 5 year admonishment goes beyond restitution, opportunity for reflection (by the registrant) and is purely designed to “label” and punish. Now I have no problem with punishment provided it is proportional – five years seems excessive to me.
Now labelling someone does not help anyone and least of all the registrant who would be, one assumes, making amends and moving on.
The effects of labelling (as if it needs illustrating) can be found in this case:
http://www.carestandardstribunal.gov.uk/Public/View.aspx?ID=1086 upon which I have commented here:
The impact was to the effect that the social worker's “conditions” on registration with the GSCC (e.g. to notify her prospective employers of these conditions) were simply by another name a sanction, based on prejudice.
Although the very reasonable people at the care standards tribunal did not use that term or imply it was a sanction ‘all but by another name’, you might see where I am coming from. They did however say the conditions were disproportionate.
An admonishment really ought in my view be linked to certain prescribed outcomes e.g. the registrant must demonstrate X, Y and/Z in the given time period and that continued registration will be dependent on those outcomes being achieved – such a process does however require some degree of competence/intellect on the part of the Regulator if it were to be administered sensibly and sensitively. In short, I see no merit whatsoever in a five year admonishment. In itself, what does it achieve?
If it is serious enough to hand down a sanction it follows that the sanction has to be linked with a certain outcome or outcomes in mind that actually targets the problem.
It is however possible, as has happened in one classic GSCC case, that there can be a finding of fact and that “misconduct” has been found but that “no sanction” has been imposed (some several years after the misconduct took place).
See http://regulatorwatch.co.uk/2009/08/mooo/ AND http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2009/08/13/112353/gscc-criticised-for-lamentable-delay-in-bringing-conduct-case.htm
On another point you raise, the GSCC (and their likes) have in my estimation been extremely keen to prove their worth and to ‘earn their spurs’ over and above any other considerations – I suspect this true also of the NISCC. The very last in their considerations have been Registrants, service users and Gawd forbid the voting/taxpaying public. They have been so ‘driven’ for self gratification, self importance and simple survival that they lost the plot – and I aint convinced yet whether they have rediscovered it.
This earning of spurs as a as a driving force has been a consistent theme throughout my postings here on Regulator Watch regarding the GSCC, but I suspect it is not unique to those nice people at Goldings House (London) and Rugby.
Back to my usual diatribe about the NISCC's totally unnecessary premises costs - their 2008/09 accounts show a rise of £50000 for their premises to approaching £500,000 pounds a year. This is crazy. It is obvious that they could shift out of the city centre into an industrial estate unit or an unused part of government estates (easy after RPA) and save the taxpayer and their registrants huge wads of wasted cash. Better still close the NISCC down entirely and create one UK regulator for social care and import staff to NI temporarily for the already infrequent conduct hearings. Nothing more is required. I rest my case and remain Watchful...
I have found two very similar conduct cases, one involving a social care registrant from the GSCC and another from the NISCC (23.09.09) who both accessed pornographic websites from their work computers on a significant number of occasions. The result of the hearings was quite different and indicates once again that the NISCC takes a much more draconian approach to misconduct which might be regarded as less socially acceptable to the moralising right wing evangelicalism of the majority DUP party in Northern Ireland. In the GSCC case the result was a suspension for two years yet in the NISCC one removal from the register was the outcome. Yet the cases were essentially identical. I think that the NISCC outcome was entirely predictable as sexual matters were involved and the NISCC felt that it had to be seen to be steadfast and upright in the narrow minded political and social world within which it operates. So much for the NISCC aligning itself with the other regulators in terms of consistency.
Colleen Stirling, Professional Adviser of the NISCC, apparantly recognises that registrants appearing before the council in conduct cases have a lack of pro bono representation and advice available to them. That said the good old NISCC has no plans to change this but that it would be looking at what was available in the province and will shortly be reviewing their processes and be mindful of these options. It would appear that social care staff who appear in conduct cases may have to rely largely on trade union representation unless they can afford the services of a solicitor none of whom are specialists in this area. Doctors and dentists on the contrary have specialist services available from organisations like the Medical Protection Society and Medical Defence Union. One wonders why the NISCC never considered that the dice were too heavily weighted against the registrant in the conduct process. This is quasi legal yet many registrants, having suffered a bruising experience at the hands of their employers in disciplinary proceedings, may feel suitably intimidated and hold their hands up rather than engage in a contest. This does not bode well for fairness and natural justice in proceedings and does not reflect well on the NISCC whose level of sanction options in such cases appears more punitive than that of the GSCC. I suspect that few social care workers in NI are members of BASW and could avail of any related services. So we will just have to wait and see what if anything the good old NISCC does on this matter. I won't be holding my breath but I will remain watchful....
My impeccable sources have been telling me of a recent conduct case which was the result of a referral from the an NI Health and Social Care Trust. Apparantly the Trust management, in their infinite general management wisdom, decided to discipline a social worker for what they perceived to be alleged serious failings in their professional practice. Following this they then referred the case to the NISCC to consider. What you may wonder was the result? Well much to my amazement my sources out there have told me that the NISCC have decided not to "progress the case"(their phrase)to a conduct hearing. This is a serious slap in the face for the Trust management who had effectively hung the poor social worker out to dry. What are the implications of this you might ask? There are several. Firstly that the Trust management has behaved totally unreasonably in disciplining the poor social worker. Now that is of course no surprise as shafting the social worker has always been a useful way to deflect blame from management. The second is that the new structure of general management in social care in NI is a potentially catastrophic failure. The third is that the NISCC has actually had the balls not to simply rubber stamp Trust disciplinary proceedings with a similar sanction. This bodes well for the NISCC in its dealings with its registrants, especially as this was an example of the type of "muddy waters" case that I feared would show the NISCC to be a poodle of the employers and their political masters. What it really does show is just how far generalist social care management, who may well not actually have any social care experience or knowledge of its ethics, may go to make sure that the shit stays securely with the social worker when something goes wrong. The whole sorry episode makes the Trust management look foolish in the extreme. After all if the charges really had any substance in the first place the NISCC would have found against the social worker. For the case not to proceed to a hearing at all is clear evidence that the Trust got it wrong period.
Back again with news from the front. I recently wrote (under my pseudonym for obvious reasons) to the NI health minister advocating the transfer of the NISCC functions to the Health Professions Council to save money. He wrote to the NI Chief social services officer for a response and this is what I got. It seems that the NISCC is going to have to make substantial economies in the next few years, not least in terms of premises but also workforce costs as is the case for all of the NHS in NI. It would appear the health department officials are presently working closely with the NISCC in assessing the implications of the GSCC decision for the future of the NISCC. The question is whether anyone will actually have the balls to bin the NISCC. Hopefully saving money will be the greater priority - I remain watchful meantime...
ps: here is the archive http://regulatorwatch.co.uk/2010/03/an-irish-perspective/comment-page-1/#comment-2541
ReplyDeleteWilt
It seems that the NISCC is diverging from its stated Business Plan point 1.8 section 1.8.1. In so doing it is evident that the NISCC is failing to ensure that it is properly aligned with the other 3 UK social care regulators on agreed policies and procedures, as it claims to aspire to in its latest business plan.
ReplyDeleteHere in NI registrants have only three potential sanctions when misconduct is found by the NISCC. I have already highlighted the NISCC's evident failure to explicitly consider possible outcomes such as "misconduct not proven" and "misconduct not found" and their apparant view that, when a case progresses to hearing, it can only result in one of three sanctions. Now it seems that in terms of an admonishment outcome in a case the NISCC will always hand down a 5 year term. This is not the case for the GSCC. A look at GSCC conduct hearing outcomes shows that the GSCC can opt for a shorter period such as 6 months or a year or any number of years up to 5. Now if the NISCC is committed to alignment with the other regulators on policies and procedures why on earth are NI registrants in conduct hearings always facing a more punitive sanction from its regulator?
The NISCC has a case to answer on its management of how hearings will be concluded. It is patently not aligned with the other regulators, appears from what it says on its site to consider guilty all whose cases progress to hearing and in the end it is choosing to treat NI registrants to a harsher range of sanctions with no evident option of innocence. That is how it appears from what is published on the NISCC site. If it is not the case then the NISCC needs to get its act together and be more clear and specific about how it intends to treat those who come before it. It also has to make demonstrably clear that it intends to comply with the rules of natural justice. So far it has failed to do so.
So the recruitment freeze on jobs in the public sector here is starting to bite even after a major review of spending for the last few years - here in NI that means that social care staff can probably expect no cover for staff off sick and no replacements for staff who leave. It is already happening. Gradually their working conditions will deteriorate and the risk of struggling with workloads will increase. Now the NISCC is there to uphold standards in social care but will it put its money where its mouth is? I doubt it. Staff will have to fight their own battles with their increasingly miserly employers on their own. They would do well to pay heed to the NISCC Codes of Practice and to quote them in supervision when the going gets tough. This will be the reality facing staff struggling to manage with vacant posts around them. The knot will get ever tighter and those who continue to man the decks will face ever greater risks to their livelihoods. The employers won't give a damn and will just feed them to the dogs when the shit hits the fan, as it surely will. They will be referred to the NISCC on the basis of alleged misconduct when something slips through the net. The reality will be that the slip ups will often be directly attributable to job cuts and the pressure on those who remain. People need to be vigilant and remain aware. Put the pressure back on the employer - as already said above use supervision to protect yourselves, quote the codes in it and get it all recorded as it was discussed, write to RQIA to complain and if that doesn't work go sick with stress. That way you will probably have a job to come back to. Failure to heed this may cost you your job. The NISCC will do nothing to help you other than to helpfully tell you that you are responsible for your own work. You have been warned.
ReplyDeleteI am back again full of "bile" towards the NISCC for its overzealous sanctions policy. I have been checking out other professional regulators' sanctions policies. In the HPC, the Health Professions Council, the regulatory body for staff like Occupational Therapists etc, the sanction that is the same as an NISCC admonishment is known as a caution and can last for any period up to five years but these are not confined to the upper part of the scale like the NISCC sanction.
ReplyDeleteSo here we have it - health and social services in Northern Ireland are fully integrated and increasingly so. That means that the conduct of two people working side by side in the same team but in different disciplines face different levels of punishment for potentially the same sort of offence. So not only is the NISCC out of step with its fellow regulators of social care while at the same time aspiring not to be in its business plan, but it seems to stand alone in its excessively draconian sanctions policy. This is totally unacceptable and why should they get away with it? Nobody holds this lot to account. Another thing - sanctions are supposed to be to protect the public not to punish the professional, according to the HPC but the NISCC likes to use the term "admonishment". This word has a punitive connotation like a reproach, a reprimand or say a rebuke. It rhymes with punishment and maybe that's why the NISCC selected it - maybe it appealed to their more draconian inclinations. A "caution" is the preferred word for the same thing by the HPC and it really does sound much more benign and encouraging as if saying "You have made a mistake my good registrant - kindly desist from repeating this for a period of....years" The NISCC version of the same would read more like "You have committed a most grave error unbecoming of a registrant and in consequence you shall be condemned to a statutory minimum of 5 long years' suffering by admonishment". Now that may sound a little draconian of me but you people at the NISCC now know what you have done wrong. It is time to get it right and sort out this sorry mess. I will be watching...
At least the NISCC can't make use of that old sanction of bygone days - banishment. It rhymes with admonishment and punishment and thus might have some appeal. I can hear how the social care worker of yore would have fared if the NISCC had existed then and decided to use this option - " Ye shall be banished to a small island inhabited by savages where ye shall have to forage for sustenance for a minimum of five long years" Now the problem with that is whether said registrant would notice any difference..
ReplyDeleteI am relaxing now as I have a day off tomorrow before returning to the fray. Maintaining my high standard of conduct and character can take a well earned break for now. I can let go of the shackles of the NISCC and have a little fun. My mind is free from its clutches. It cannot police what I think. Now I think anagrams are quite good fun and I wonder what ones I might be able to come up with for the NISCC. Well sadly there is nothing that springs to mind for that precisely. Now Social Care Council is a different matter. I need to keep my grey matter in good running order to function to NISCC standards after my day off. So what can we make of this jumble of letters I wonder? "Asocial Conic Ulcer" is my best shot after my day's hard travail. Does it make sense? Possibly not but from the current satirical standpoint that I am seeing things from it somehow does...No offence intended NISCC people -you know you need to have a little laugh at yourselves from time to time, such are the burdens of your office.
ReplyDeleteOur friends at the NISCC are back with their draconian predisposition on full show. The social care workforce in NI is gradually being registered but registration is not yet a legal requirement for all levels of social care workers below social worker. Yet the NISCC is writing out to the employers when some of those pending registrants fail to pay attention to the plan to get them registered. And what does the good old employer do? My sources have told me of at least one instance where a social care worker who failed to register on time was actually sent home by their employer without pay until they got registered. Now if their registration is not yet a legal requirement what the hell are the NISCC and the employers doing basically ignoring the fact and harassing people? I can see that this incompetence and heavy handed approach will end up costing the employer and the taxpayer a substantial amount in compensation. I thought that the employers were about saving money not wasting it by failing to get their facts right. These people are idiots, draconian idiots. I remain cynical to the core and Watchful.....
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good work Watchful - I agree these people are just arrogant fools who will come a serious cropper one day. I know someone who once had contract work removed because they decided not to “voluntarily” re-register with the GSCC (they do not use the legally protected title “social worker”) and then successfully extracted the full costs of the contract from the employer (contractor) without doing a day’s work – it came to many £several thousands of pounds. Not a bad pay off for doing nothing and a couple of threatening letters mentioning “breach of contract” and “employment tribunal” or “County Court.”
ReplyDeleteThere was no legal basis to require “registration” and besides the formal contract jointly signed had no mention of the GSCC or registration. In sporting terms I think that is Contractor 0 – 2 Consultant, or game set and match.
Will these people never learn?
Wilt
Just curious Wilt but what do you make of the NISCC's use of a single and extreme length of admonishments (5yrs)? This is tantamount to having a disciplinary warning held on file for that time. Even a final warning for gross misconduct only lasts 2 years. So what the heck are these power crazy idiots doing having in place such an extreme sanction which puts NI registrants at an increased risk of removal on a totting up basis than their counterparts in the GSCC? Why did they decide that this had to last 5 years and why is the sanction not aligned with the other regulators? My guess is that they want to look as if they mean more business than any other regulator. It is all about making themselves feel important and at odds with their aspiration to be aligned in policies and procedures with the other regulators. They only show themselves to be the fools that they are.
ReplyDeleteNow while I am at times rather critical of our dear old local regulator, by comparison with our not so dear employers here I suspect that they might be relative paragons of virtue. The employers, like most before them have no concept of fair play and behave with spectacular meanness and duplicity, aided and abetted in this by their respective personnel departments. They use every trick in the book to disadvantage staff and to get their way by trying to sideline unions, playing fast and loose with discovery and witness statements in disciplinary proceedings and generally shifting blame onto the poor social care worker wherever possible. It is of course the way with most public sector employers. They get all sanctimonious about social care staff who fail to follow the rules but they break every moral rule in the book and have no compunction in doing so.
ReplyDeleteWatchful
ReplyDeleteMy belated reply to your question (post 9 above) is that a 5 year admonishment goes beyond restitution, opportunity for reflection (by the registrant) and is purely designed to “label” and punish. Now I have no problem with punishment provided it is proportional – five years seems excessive to me.
Now labelling someone does not help anyone and least of all the registrant who would be, one assumes, making amends and moving on.
The effects of labelling (as if it needs illustrating) can be found in this case:
http://www.carestandardstribunal.gov.uk/Public/View.aspx?ID=1086 upon which I have commented here:
http://regulatorwatch.co.uk/2010/07/gscc-prejudice/
The impact was to the effect that the social worker's “conditions” on registration with the GSCC (e.g. to notify her prospective employers of these conditions) were simply by another name a sanction, based on prejudice.
Although the very reasonable people at the care standards tribunal did not use that term or imply it was a sanction ‘all but by another name’, you might see where I am coming from. They did however say the conditions were disproportionate.
An admonishment really ought in my view be linked to certain prescribed outcomes e.g. the registrant must demonstrate X, Y and/Z in the given time period and that continued registration will be dependent on those outcomes being achieved – such a process does however require some degree of competence/intellect on the part of the Regulator if it were to be administered sensibly and sensitively.
In short, I see no merit whatsoever in a five year admonishment. In itself, what does it achieve?
If it is serious enough to hand down a sanction it follows that the sanction has to be linked with a certain outcome or outcomes in mind that actually targets the problem.
It is however possible, as has happened in one classic GSCC case, that there can be a finding of fact and that “misconduct” has been found but that “no sanction” has been imposed (some several years after the misconduct took place).
See http://regulatorwatch.co.uk/2009/08/mooo/ AND http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2009/08/13/112353/gscc-criticised-for-lamentable-delay-in-bringing-conduct-case.htm
On another point you raise, the GSCC (and their likes) have in my estimation been extremely keen to prove their worth and to ‘earn their spurs’ over and above any other considerations – I suspect this true also of the NISCC. The very last in their considerations have been Registrants, service users and Gawd forbid the voting/taxpaying public.
They have been so ‘driven’ for self gratification, self importance and simple survival that they lost the plot – and I aint convinced yet whether they have rediscovered it.
This earning of spurs as a as a driving force has been a consistent theme throughout my postings here on Regulator Watch regarding the GSCC, but I suspect it is not unique to those nice people at Goldings House (London) and Rugby.
Keep up the good work Watchful.
Kind regards,
Wilt
Back to my usual diatribe about the NISCC's totally unnecessary premises costs - their 2008/09 accounts show a rise of £50000 for their premises to approaching £500,000 pounds a year. This is crazy. It is obvious that they could shift out of the city centre into an industrial estate unit or an unused part of government estates (easy after RPA) and save the taxpayer and their registrants huge wads of wasted cash. Better still close the NISCC down entirely and create one UK regulator for social care and import staff to NI temporarily for the already infrequent conduct hearings. Nothing more is required. I rest my case and remain Watchful...
ReplyDeleteI have found two very similar conduct cases, one involving a social care registrant from the GSCC and another from the NISCC (23.09.09) who both accessed pornographic websites from their work computers on a significant number of occasions. The result of the hearings was quite different and indicates once again that the NISCC takes a much more draconian approach to misconduct which might be regarded as less socially acceptable to the moralising right wing evangelicalism of the majority DUP party in Northern Ireland. In the GSCC case the result was a suspension for two years yet in the NISCC one removal from the register was the outcome. Yet the cases were essentially identical.
ReplyDeleteI think that the NISCC outcome was entirely predictable as sexual matters were involved and the NISCC felt that it had to be seen to be steadfast and upright in the narrow minded political and social world within which it operates. So much for the NISCC aligning itself with the other regulators in terms of consistency.
http://www.gscc.org.uk/NR/rdonlyres/AA176AF6-7A81-4CB7-8BD5-12FE7E710EA0/0/NOTICEOFDECISIONSIMPSON.pdf
http://www.niscc.info/news-172.aspx#2309
Colleen Stirling, Professional Adviser of the NISCC, apparantly recognises that registrants appearing before the council in conduct cases have a lack of pro bono representation and advice available to them. That said the good old NISCC has no plans to change this but that it would be looking at what was available in the province and will shortly be reviewing their processes and be mindful of these options.
ReplyDeleteIt would appear that social care staff who appear in conduct cases may have to rely largely on trade union representation unless they can afford the services of a solicitor none of whom are specialists in this area. Doctors and dentists on the contrary have specialist services available from organisations like the Medical Protection Society and Medical Defence Union. One wonders why the NISCC never considered that the dice were too heavily weighted against the registrant in the conduct process. This is quasi legal yet many registrants, having suffered a bruising experience at the hands of their employers in disciplinary proceedings, may feel suitably intimidated and hold their hands up rather than engage in a contest. This does not bode well for fairness and natural justice in proceedings and does not reflect well on the NISCC whose level of sanction options in such cases appears more punitive than that of the GSCC. I suspect that few social care workers in NI are members of BASW and could avail of any related services. So we will just have to wait and see what if anything the good old NISCC does on this matter. I won't be holding my breath but I will remain watchful....
My impeccable sources have been telling me of a recent conduct case which was the result of a referral from the an NI Health and Social Care Trust. Apparantly the Trust management, in their infinite general management wisdom, decided to discipline a social worker for what they perceived to be alleged serious failings in their professional practice. Following this they then referred the case to the NISCC to consider. What you may wonder was the result? Well much to my amazement my sources out there have told me that the NISCC have decided not to "progress the case"(their phrase)to a conduct hearing. This is a serious slap in the face for the Trust management who had effectively hung the poor social worker out to dry. What are the implications of this you might ask? There are several. Firstly that the Trust management has behaved totally unreasonably in disciplining the poor social worker. Now that is of course no surprise as shafting the social worker has always been a useful way to deflect blame from management. The second is that the new structure of general management in social care in NI is a potentially catastrophic failure. The third is that the NISCC has actually had the balls not to simply rubber stamp Trust disciplinary proceedings with a similar sanction. This bodes well for the NISCC in its dealings with its registrants, especially as this was an example of the type of "muddy waters" case that I feared would show the NISCC to be a poodle of the employers and their political masters. What it really does show is just how far generalist social care management, who may well not actually have any social care experience or knowledge of its ethics, may go to make sure that the shit stays securely with the social worker when something goes wrong. The whole sorry episode makes the Trust management look foolish in the extreme. After all if the charges really had any substance in the first place the NISCC would have found against the social worker. For the case not to proceed to a hearing at all is clear evidence that the Trust got it wrong period.
ReplyDeleteBack again with news from the front. I recently wrote (under my pseudonym for obvious reasons) to the NI health minister advocating the transfer of the NISCC functions to the Health Professions Council to save money. He wrote to the NI Chief social services officer for a response and this is what I got. It seems that the NISCC is going to have to make substantial economies in the next few years, not least in terms of premises but also workforce costs as is the case for all of the NHS in NI. It would appear the health department officials are presently working closely with the NISCC in assessing the implications of the GSCC decision for the future of the NISCC. The question is whether anyone will actually have the balls to bin the NISCC. Hopefully saving money will be the greater priority - I remain watchful meantime...
ReplyDelete