Monday 14 February 2011

Code of practice 5: As a social service worker you must uphold public trust and confidence in social services

So, in particular we must not:

  • Abuse, neglect or harm service users, carers or colleagues;
  • Exploit service users, carers or colleagues in any way;
  • Abuse the trust of service users and carers or the access you have to personal information about them, or to their property, home or workplace;
  • Form inappropriate personal relationships with services users;
  • Discriminate unlawfully or unjustifiably against service users, carers or colleagues;
  • Condone any unlawful or unjustifiable discrimination by service users, carers or colleagues;
  • Put yourself or other people at unnecessary risk; or,

  • Behave in a way, in work or outside work, which would call into question your suitability to work in social services.
This headline appeared in a recent Health Service Journal:

"Hundreds of care home deaths caused by dehydration"
The article went on to reveal that new statistics show that more than 650 elderly residents in care homes have died of dehydration in the past five years.

Do you think that those working in home were aware of code of practice 5? And what do you think that the care workers could have done to ensure that their service users were not neglected or harmed ?