Body to deal with social workers’ disciplinary hearings will not be investigating older cases

THE new body which will begin disciplinary hearings involving social workers next year will not deal with older cases, it emerged yesterday.

Coru, the organisation responsible for regulating health and social care professionals, said statutory registration of social workers will be in place by the middle of next year following the recent appointment of the Social Workers Registration Board by Minister for Health Mary Harney.

Amid growing calls for accountability in the Roscommon abuse case, the HSE has said that it will begin a separate process looking at whether social workers and others involved with the family have a case to answer.

However, Coru, also known as the Health and Social Care Council, said it would not be acting retrospectively when hearings begin next year.

In addition, the HSE confirmed that only staff still working within the executive will be the focus of the review process looking at failings in the Roscommon case. It means that some of those who failed to extricate the six children from the care of parents who neglected and abused them for years are unlikely ever to be sanctioned.

The Irish Examiner understands at least one person involved with the family’s case had earlier worked in the McColgan abuse case in Co Mayo. It is understood that person is still working within the HSE.

The HSE said it could not provide statistics as to the number of social workers who had entered its four-stage disciplinary process in recent years. Earlier this year it revealed that eight members of staff from various parts of the HSE were sacked last year, but could not provide specific details.

In their statement, the relatives of the children stressed that those responsible for the inaction and poor decisions which left the children within the family home had to be held accountable.

“We have concerns that four of the children are still in the care of the HSE West, as our experience has left us with no confidence in their ability to care for vulnerable children,” the statement said. “We have witnessed little change in the HSE in the last 20 years. Unless these recommendations are taken seriously and fully implemented we see little hope for children in the future. We believe the individuals who failed to act in this case must now be held accountable.”

Coru’s role is to protect the public by promoting high standards of professional conduct, education, training and competence across 12 health and social care professions, including social workers, the first profession to be registered. Statutory registration will enable Coru to sanction social workers who do not meet the standards set out in the Code of Professional Conduct and Ethics, up to and including preventing them from practising as a social worker, but it will not apply retrospectively.

Ginny Hanrahan, chief executive of Coru, said: “We are currently developing a system of regulation for health and social care professionals that will set high standards of conduct and competence among registrants.

“We will also be able to deal with complaints against registrants in relation to fitness to practice.”

He said the Social Workers Registration Board at Coru is working on the development of standards and will shortly be launching a public consultation process to ensure that the regulation process is “robust and fair”.

In light of the Roscommon report, Coru has also contacted key stakeholders involved in the protection of children’s rights to invite them to contribute to the development of the system of regulation and to participate in the consultation process.