A social worker from Sunderland has been suspended from practising for two years and asked to undertake further training after he physically restricted a person who used services in a way that breached official guidelines.
An independent Committee of the General Social Care Council heard that Frederick Keith Stockdale, 42 and from Sunderland, shouted at and physically restricted the movement of a woman with learning disabilities during an exchange at the residential centre he worked at.
The Committee found that his actions at Villette Lodge, a Sunderland City Council owned residential centre for adults with learning disabilities, constituted the “abuse of a vulnerable service user”. The Committee was particularly concerned with Mr Stockdale’s failure to recognise that the situation developed to a stage where it was no longer safe or appropriate for him to address it alone. Although there was a colleague in the vicinity, Mr Stockdale did not ask for assistance or remove himself from the situation, ultimately causing the woman “considerable and unnecessary distress”.
The Committee found that Mr Stockdale’s actions constituted misconduct, concluding that he breached several areas of the GSCC’s code of practice by which social workers are required to abide. His actions also contravened the official guidelines on physical intervention set out by the Department of Health.
In deciding their sanction, the Committee took into account Mr Stockdale’s otherwise unblemished record and that though serious, Mr Stockdale’s actions were not “fundamentally incompatible with his undertaking work as a registered social care worker in the future”. In suspending him from practice for two years - the maximum period available to them - the Committee did however recommend that Mr Stockdale would benefit from appropriate training in addressing challenging behaviour of people who use services and reflect further on how he could learn from the incident prior to undertaking any professional social work duties in the future.
Sir Rodney Brooke, Chair of the GSCC, said: “It is vital that the public can have confidence and trust in social care services and suspending those whose conduct does not meet the standards required of them is an important means of achieving this. It is also important to reassure people who use services and the public as a whole that the majority of social workers work to a very high standard, putting the interests of service users at the heart of everything they do. Fortunately, those who commit misconduct form only a tiny part of the 82,000 social workers who practice in England.”
Registrants have a right of appeal to the independent Care Standards Tribunal.