Someone is trying to ruin my life and it is working

[thisisthend]

Someone made a phone to my university reporting me telling them I had been sectioned in the past. Now the university are threatening to throw me off the course. The questions at admission asked if I had a mental health condition or had been a service user of a local authority, and I answered 'no' because I do not have a diagnosed condition and did not think that question applied to me. Now the uni is treating me like a liar. I feel discriminated against. I keep telling them this but they won't accept what I am saying. This person has done this maliciously to ruin my life. I've been got the police involved saying it is malicious but the uni aren't interested. What can I do?

do not allow her to continue with the course they have caused her serious financial problems (give up job, possibly incur debt re fees).

the issue is she lied in the application, this is fraud,. potentially she will be required to repay all training costs, loans and earnings, and could also end up with a criminal record.

sorry if this is sounds negative, but please take heed, anyone applying to uni, or with DC applying to Uni.

I've had to give evidence in court before when ex students of mine have been accused of fraudulent applications.

Don't lie in the application.

It is a criminal offence.

It is fraud.

the sort of statements I have had to give evidence to bck up in the past have been when someone has claimed that they didn't take maths GCSE in year 11, but waited until year 12. The uni suspected they were hiding a poor grade the first time around.

the other was related to the date of entry into the uk.

Having been sat on the other side as a social worker and witnessing the absolutely catastrophic fall out when a student failed to disclose a previous MH issue and subsequently put themself and others at risk whilst on placement I can understand why the university has taken the steps they have.

I agree though OP that it was very unfair of the university to let you get to this point in the course before raising it with you.

Ultimately though not disclosing something relevant like a detention under the mental health act when entering onto a professional course such as social work shows considerable lack of judgement which is the problem here when a huge amount of social work is about exercising good professional judgement.

I suspect they may offer you the option of doing a similar course that will not result in a social work qualification rather than throwing you out completely.

Once again, there is no legal obligation to give information on a disability or health issue. At all. Same goes for job applications.
Please, don't pay attention to the scaremongering OP. People are talking about different scenarios.
The lack of support on this thread is shocking.

And therefore no legal requirement to offer a place or job to someone who refuses...

Can't force someone you've offered a teaching job to to undertake a DBS for example. Can rescind the offer though.

Grinch of course no one has to disclose anything, but then you won’t be able to train or work as a social worker. The OP didn’t just refuse to disclose whether she has had mental health issues, she lied about it.

OP, there is a lot of incorrect advice and misinformation in this thread.

That was in response to a poster throwing 'fraud' and 'criminal offence' around. OP is not going to get a criminal conviction ffs. Why come on a thread where OP is stressed because her life is up in the air and then try to frighten her even more?
And for what it's worth, as there is no legal requirement to disclose health issues or disability, it can be discrimination to use that as a reason to terminate employment/rescind offers/throw off a course.
I'm speaking from a legal perspective.

grinch you seem to be missing the fact the OP lied about her history? that’s not discrimination if she is kicked off he course due to lying, they wouldn’t kick her off just for having MH issues.

I study medicine and have an array of current mental health issues, I’ve suspended studies atm of my own accord but i disclosed this information when filling in my occupational health form, it would only have been an issue if i was deemed unfit to practice due to my MH or if i said I never had any issues

No, most of my posts address the 'lying'.

Dipping, if your health issues are current, relevant, and require you to take time off and receive additional support, then of course you were upfront about it.
OP didn't lie, and if she had chosen to tick the 'wrong' box, that is her right.

No she did lie, because the forms always ask ‘have you ever’ so yes she lied.

Intentionally or not, you provided incorrect information on the form.

If you were sectioned, you were under the care of services - using their services - diagnosis or not.

Your tutor didn't do anything except phrase a suggestion in a way that you disagree with, it is not worthy of a complaint and is no way discriminatory.

You are externalising all responsibility for this and making accusations about a range of people which would make me wonder if you are in the right place to do a clinical placement.

SW is tough, SW training is hard - you need to be well, resilient and reflective / self aware to do it.

Judging purely by your posts on here, it doesn't sound like you are any of those things at the moment.

The PP who talked about it bringing the OP’s judgement into question is correct. I work in a university, with HCP students. Disclosure of MH problems is related to OH (which tutors would not find out about - it would only go through OH and clearance is all that tutors would be aware of) and placement areas (sensitivity wrt to students who have been service users in particular locations - again, details of this not necessary for tutors to be aware of). It has nothing to do with a student’s ability to study the course or join the profession. However, a student’s ability to recognise when they should disclose something important, just like their ability to judge whether their practice will be affected by personal circumstances, is extremely important. This is where the fitness to practise will come into question - the lack of disclosure rather than the MH issue itself. The OP has the right to disclose or not, but equally the university has the right to put the fitness to practise policy into action.

The thing that concerns me is the timeline and the OP’s apparent lack of understanding of what the university’s policies and processes are. The first thing that should be ensured is that the student understands what is going to happen and when, and for them to be aware of where and who they can go to for support with this. She should not be assuming that she is going to be withdrawn from the course (it should not be a foregone conclusion), but she should be aware that this is a risk, and the policy should outline the criteria for the different possible outcomes of the process.

I do this stuff day in day out for my job. I hear students saying “I was not aware that this applied to me” all the time. Sometimes it is deliberately covering things up, sometimes it is an error of judgement which may be improved upon during the course of their studies

Fraud and criminal investigations, IME, would not come into play in the scenario the OP outlines - that is more in relation to falsification of documentation or ID to get onto a publicly-funded course

'She did lie' no. No she didn't. Being admitted in the past or receiving treatment isn't the same as being engaged with agencies like Mind or social services, as a service user.
OP has the autonomy to make her own judgment, and did so having taken into account: that she's fine, she has no illnesses, can do the course, hasn't been a service user.

What do you think a service user is??

She has had mental health issues though. It’s also quite strange to be sectioned for being suicidal and have no further ‘treatment’ eg even a follow up with at the very least a counsellor.

When i applied for my course i wasn’t a service user at the time either yet still stated my previous issues to prevent anything like this happening.

grinch her judgement in this situation was poor.

She will not be the only person on her course who has had past experience of services. The difference is she has chosen not to disclose it. She didn't forget, she considered the questions and decided to omit her history from the application because she thought she could get away with it because of the way the question was worded.

If she had disclosed it and explained that 'she's fine, she has no illnesses and can do the course' then this wouldn't have been happening right now. It's happening because the university are concerned about her decision not to disclose her historical contact with mental health services.

The HCPC professional fitness to practice hearings are littered with social worker's (and other HCPC registered professionals) being suspended, cautioned, or struck off for similar errors of judgement. In this area of work a deliberate omission is as bad as a lie.

Would you want someone who had dubious judgement around disclosure of information to be the person in charge of the decision whether or not to put your child forward for child protection proceedings, or carefully balance the information received about a serious adult safeguarding issue?

Despite all that I feel very sorry for the OP, she has insight into what it's like to be on the other side of the desk in a service user situation and that's invaluable and something many social worker's will never have. It's a real shame that she made the choice she did.

My post above refers to service users.

Sometimes people get burnt out, don't sleep for days and end up losing touch with reality temporarily and receive no further treatment.
Some people kill themselves in the heat of the moment with no previous (diagnosed) mental health history. It happens.
Sometimes people get depressed as a side effect of whatever is happening in their lives, they recover when the situational problems are resolved.
Not everyone has a serious mental health illness such a depression, lifelong. Others do, but won't be defined by it.
Mental health services in this country are in crisis for those amongst us who desperately require help, I can easily believe that OP had no follow ups after her episode.

No idea why my iPad has decided to autocorrect social workers to social worker's.

She was a service user when she was sectioned for a start, I’m fully aware of the state of the MH services in this country but there is generally some follow up even with your GP prior to an attempt at suicide.

No one is saying anyone should be defined about their MH

Again, the OP’s mental health history has nothing to do with her ability to study the course or work in the profession (many many HCP students are service users or former service users - it’s often a cited reason for wanting to join the course and profession). Her judgement and understanding about disclosure is relevant however.

Theyre looking for evidence of your transparency with that question
They would have accepted you on the course if you had given the whole story and said "no but I do have a resolved mental health history from greater than 5 years ago"
The issue is that you did not. Not whether or not the history would have made you a suitable student.

Basically, rightly so they dont want to churn out a Sw who leaves out chunks of client interractions on reports because the form didnt ask expressly enough and you decided not to include that part of the interaction.

My point about not being defined by MH is, as I've said before relevant to the choice she made and the right she has, to not disclose this past event.
It might have been a poor judgement call, but I take OP at face value, why wouldn't I, and as she is of sound mind and knows the full details, it probably wasn't a poor judgement call.
I hope all goes well for her and hope, knowing the sacrifices to be made for higher/further education that this doesn't impact on her course.
It would seem I'm in the minority here in being gutted for her, rather than wanting to beat her hard round the head with a stick of mistruths.

If you apply for a vocational course admissions criteria will be more stringent. Any health declaration I have completed always asks “have you ever had” so they are not just wanting to know about current problems. The HCPC standards of conduct performance and ethics states that you have to be honest and trustworthy which is the concern of the university here. If you have made a genuine mistake I do sympathise but the university will need to be happy that you haven’t tried to conceal information.

It wasnt her call to make. It was OH. And now OHs decision to admit her has been invalidated as they didnt have all the information they needed.

Had they had the informatiom at the time they probably would have admitted her

But now, shes showed a trait that is a professional practice concern by not fully disclosing to the appropriate people and makimg decisions that are not her decision to make!

Admissions and OH clearance was NOT her remit, it was not up to her to decide whether or not her MH history was historic and resolved enough for her to be admitted.