Social care regulator ‘ignored misconduct complaints to save money’

Complaints of misconduct against social workers were shelved to save money, after the profession’s regulatory body had its budget cut, an inquiry reports today.

Applications for suspension of social workers until allegations against them could be heard were also discouraged on cost grounds, according to the report on the General Social Care Council (GSCC).

The report says that members of the GSCC’s governing council believed the Department of Health had approved the cost-saving measures. The department is strongly denying that it did so.

The inquiry, carried out by the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence (CHRE), was ordered after it emerged this summer that the GSCC had a backlog of more than 200 cases against social workers and social work students. Many of the cases had not been risk-assessed and, on initial investigation, 21 were found to raise public protection concerns.

Mike Wardle, the GSCC’s chief executive, was suspended when the inquiry was ordered and is not expected to resume the role.

The CHRE, which oversees regulation of healthcare professionals, says that at times since 2007 the backlog of social work conduct cases has reached 700. Case files went missing and investigators stopped using the central case management system, which was unpopular.

Despite this, a management report to the GSCC council suggested that the body had hit all its performance targets for 2008-09 and the council did not question the state of affairs.

Harry Cayton, CHRE chief executive, said the findings raised profound questions about the council’s role. “They have a right to trust their own executive; I think that’s reasonable. But they also have a duty to scrutinise their own executive. I think that balance wasn’t right.”

The management’s instruction to shelve cases came in September 2007, after the health department cut the GSCC’s budget, when investigators were told not to schedule further conduct hearings until the following April.

The CHRE report says: “Our discussions with council members suggested that they believed the DH had approved this decision.” A spokesman for the health department said: “We can find no evidence that the department was ever informed of this decision. We can imagine no circumstances in which such a decision would have been agreed by government.”

Analysis by the CHRE shows a marked drop in applications for suspension orders after September 2007, after staff came “under the impression that they should not refer cases for a hearing for an interim suspension order, unless they were extremely serious, such as cases involving violence or child abuse.”

Cayton said the inquiry team was taken aback to find that one of the GSCC’s performance indicators required it to achieve the “desired outcome” in 90% of cases. Irrespective of cost savings, this would have acted as a disincentive to refer borderline cases for hearing and was “not conducive to robust public protection.”

Although Cayton said it was not possible to judge whether the GSCC’s failings had put adults and children at specific risk. He added: “There were potential risks arising from failure to deal with cases quickly, and particularly to ensure that interim suspension orders were in place for people who were accused of serious offences.”

The GSCC was set up in 2001 and had been due to extend its conduct function to cover all 1.4 million workers in the social care sector. That has now been stopped.

Today’s report says the government should reconsider its approach to regulating social care. It argues that the GSCC suffers from a confused remit, unclear lines of accountability and financial dependency on the health department.

“We recognise that public funding must be based on value for money, but also that decisions about risk in relation to public protection should not be led by financial restraint,” the report concludes.

A spokesman for the health department said it had responded to pleas by the GSCC to review its resources for conduct work. In 2008, it had given the body an “extra” £2.2million to help deal with the backlog of cases.

Phil Hope, care services minister, said in a statement that the government welcomed the CHRE report and “broadly” accepted all its recommendations.

The GSCC has made significant progress in its handling of conduct cases and reforming its processes, Hope said. It has been set “realistic but challenging” new performance targets and was making monthly progress reports.

Rosie Varley, GSCC chair, said: “Ensuring public protection was my reason for joining GSCC last year and it was a matter of extreme concern to me when we identified that there were serious problems in the management of our conduct work, resulting in a backlog of cases.”

The original backlog had now been cleared and the GSCC was “able to take prompt and appropriate action where we believe that social workers pose risks to public protection”, Varley said. However, there remained a lot of work to do to get the conduct function on a sustainable footing.