A SOCIAL worker has been admonished after making mistakes while working for Essex County Council.

Jacqueline Bonhomme, aged 58, was found guilty of misconduct by the General Social Care Council (GSCC) between January 2004 and May 2006, while she was working for the county council and other authorities.

The authority itself was also criticised for its failure to provide Bonhomme, who had only recently qualified overseas, with the initial extra training required and failing to supervise her adequately.

At the end of the five-day hearing, the committee found:

  • She had failed to carry out visits to youngsters on the child protection register within the necessary time, which represented a failure to establish and maintain trust and confidence of service- users and carers, and a failure to act dependably.
  • She had also asked the mother of a service-user to take papers relating to another service-user, which were contained in a clear plastic folder, to the headteacher of a school.
  • She completed an initial assessment for a service-user that included a statement relating to obsessive compulsive disorder, which was copied from a psychiatric report relating to a different service-user, when she was not qualified to judge whether the statement was appropriate.
  • She had breached service-user confidentiality by providing documents in a non-anonymous form on her behalf at an interim suspension order hearing brought by the GSCC.

The committee judged that Bonhomme, of Durban, South Africa, had betrayed the trust of the service-users and carers concerned, and the access that she had to personal information about them, and placed an admonishment on her record for two years - although there is a right to appeal.

A county council spokesman said: "The county council will carefully consider the comments made in this report, and make sure the appropriate action is taken to ensure that the relevant recommendations are implemented."