Shocking!
I got home from the waste of time parenting course today (not that the course is a waste of time, just a waste of time for us, as we already do all the techniques suggested!) to find an answerphone message from the duty social worker asking that I call back urgently! Quite worrying - duty SW's are usually only involved in serious & immediately urgent issues, and considering I have been trying for nearly 2 years to get SS to assess Mstr A, me or the family without ever getting a reply out of them, I was obviously a little concerned as to what they wanted so desperately.
I get the woman on the phone & she queries why Mstr A has missed "several" appointments at a place I've never heard of. I ask for more details and get told the name of the centre, what it specialises in, what the appointments were for (blood tests), what the blood tests were for, and how many appointments have been missed. At which point I explain that Mstr A has not recieved any appts, has never had any contact woth that centre, and would not have any reason to attend somewhere of that specialisation, or to have blood tests, and certainly not for that condition! After a bit of arguing, SW agrees to check the details with the centre & get back to me.
5 mins later, she calls back & apologises - the details were all about another child with a similar name
So. Now I have loads of seriously personal info about another child. AND, SS obviously have utterly terrible record keeping procedures. WTF DO they have on Mstr A's file? I ask what details she has on his file. She is very cagey, but it transpires that they certainly do not have all the details they should (no referral from the school for starters, which I KNOW happened over a year ago!)
I have sent a formal comnplaint about the procedures & request for a copy of his file to check details held - but really, you have to wonder WTF is happening in SS nowadays! If I gave any one of those pieces of info to a client about another client I would be immediately sacked and, I expect, sued!
I wonder what sort of response I'll get - and what might be on my SS file now!!!!
I get the woman on the phone & she queries why Mstr A has missed "several" appointments at a place I've never heard of. I ask for more details and get told the name of the centre, what it specialises in, what the appointments were for (blood tests), what the blood tests were for, and how many appointments have been missed. At which point I explain that Mstr A has not recieved any appts, has never had any contact woth that centre, and would not have any reason to attend somewhere of that specialisation, or to have blood tests, and certainly not for that condition! After a bit of arguing, SW agrees to check the details with the centre & get back to me.
5 mins later, she calls back & apologises - the details were all about another child with a similar name
So. Now I have loads of seriously personal info about another child. AND, SS obviously have utterly terrible record keeping procedures. WTF DO they have on Mstr A's file? I ask what details she has on his file. She is very cagey, but it transpires that they certainly do not have all the details they should (no referral from the school for starters, which I KNOW happened over a year ago!)
I have sent a formal comnplaint about the procedures & request for a copy of his file to check details held - but really, you have to wonder WTF is happening in SS nowadays! If I gave any one of those pieces of info to a client about another client I would be immediately sacked and, I expect, sued!
I wonder what sort of response I'll get - and what might be on my SS file now!!!!
Labels: social services
posted by Juggling Mother @ 3:44 pm
1 Comments:
At Friday, November 13, 2009 7:33:00 pm,
Sleepypete said…
In a time of all this embarassment about data being lost, it's amazing how things like this can still happen ...
Post a Comment
<< Home