To think this is potentially nepotism?

[Lasagnainmyhair]

I work in care 1 to 1 with a young child who is in a foster home. One of my colleagues handed their notice in so they’ve hired someone new, we had a team meeting last week over teams and met the new team member.

The person they’ve hired is the daughter of the child’s foster mum so she will be working in her family home that she also lived in until 8 months ago. We found it a bit weird that they was introducing someone already when we heard that was the purpose of the meeting as for all of us the time between getting hired and being introduced to the team was around 2-3 months as there’s lots of checks and training to do and the person leaving only gave her notice 2 weeks ago and the company hadn’t even advertised for the job yet, we thought maybe they had gone back to someone they had interviewed at the start of the year when the most recent team member was hired but it makes sense now, I assume they’ve just fast tracked her due to being the daughter.

The position wasn’t even advertised for yet, I know this as I’ve been looking for a new job and would’ve definitely came across it, as has the one who is leaving, and the daughter doesn’t have a background in care. She’s obviously been hired only because she is the mums daughter.

Is this classed as nepotism?

And the problem is?

I suppose there may not be an issue, that’s why I’m asking?

my issue, along with the other team members, is that someone with no experience has been hired for a job that was never advertised, to work in her childhood home with her mother. Our managers don’t work alongside us and we rarely see them, in fact our new manager starting soon lives in wales and we’re in england so even less chance of him visiting, all our feedback on how we’re doing at our job comes with the foster mum, how will she hold her daughter to same standard as us? And say one of them was putting the child at risk, will they be able to report their mum/daughter?

if there’s no issue then that’s fine, we will work alongside her perfectly fine. Just seems a bit dodgy to me.

Hmmm. Interesting. My concern would not be nepotism but objectivity. Is the daughter able to be objective re the foster mother? What if the foster mother is found to be failing the child in some way? It potentially puts the daughter in a very awkward position of divided loyalties.

No, technically that is not nepotism.
Nepotism is when the hiring manager hires a relative or partner for a job.
As in when Donald Trump hired his daughter and SIL to be highly paid White House advisors on his staff. That’s nepotism.

The foster mothers daughter isn’t related to whoever hired her for the job.
So not nepotism.

Our managers don’t work alongside us and we rarely see them, in fact our new manager starting soon lives in wales and we’re in england so even less chance of him visiting, all our feedback on how we’re doing at our job comes with the foster mum, how will she hold her daughter to same standard as us? And say one of them was putting the child at risk, will they be able to report their mum/daughter?

The problem is a conflict of interest problem. The foster mothers daughter should be assigned to a different foster home for 1:1 provision. I wouldn’t get into “no experienced, never advertised” pissing match as that’s hard to overturn. But the being put in a position where you are evaluating and potentially reporting on a relative is a conflict of interest.

That’s my concern. The mother is absolutely lovely but her daughters are her weak spot, one still lives ther and she runs around after her constantly and it was the same when the other one lived there aswell. I don’t think she could be objective at all but I suppose that’s something no one could say for sure.

Well it’s definitely unusual. The daughter would effectively be working with her mother’s foster child with her mother present. Also, do DBS checks clear this quickly? And not advertising the job isn’t on if it’s local authority, publicly funded but I suppose if it’s a privately run company nothing to stop them.

As an adult member of the foster household the daughter may well have had a DBS check already. Similarly she may have a good understanding of the foster child's needs and possibly also experience of caring for them. I wouldn'tbmake an issue of this unless and until there is actually an issue.