Leicester Council social worker struck off for inaction

A senior social worker has been struck off the professional register for putting children at risk by failing to allocate 90 cases for investigation.

The General Social Care Council (GSCC) said Joy Coles, 55, a team manager in the duty and assessment service at Leicester council’s children’s department, knowingly misled her managers about the number of unallocated cases, and backdated closing dates of other cases to cover her tracks.

In one instance, she took no action into allegations of physical abuse towards children in a family. The children were eventually put on the child protection register, but the committee said the delay could have put the children at risk of harm.

The GSCC said Coles also failed to allocate other child protection cases that should have been dealt with urgently. Her behaviour “called into question her suitability to remain on the register and also harmed the reputation and standing of the social care profession.”

Coles was a team manager in Leicester for four years to November 2005.

The GSCC added: “By her persistent inaction and failures she placed children at risk of harm. She failed to safeguard vulnerable children. She was a team manager responsible for allocating cases and fundamentally failed in this regard.”

Coles breached the code of practice for social care workers because “she put service users at risk, was dishonest, failed to communicate with managers about these issues, and was unreliable and lacked dependability.”

Rosie Varley, chair of the GSCC, said: “All social workers sign up to a code of practice when they register with us and the majority of the 95,000 people on the social care register find no difficulty with being honest and upholding public confidence in the profession. It is vital that social workers do all they can to protect vulnerable people. Any concerns raised about a child’s welfare should be taken seriously by a social worker, and we will take the appropriate action if we think children have been let down and put at further risk.”

Coles has a right of appeal to an independent tribunal.