Social worker's conduct - confidentiality

[Conecraft]

The social worker involved with my daughter in respect of her children approached her on a rare night out with friends and in a public place (nightclub/rave). They had only met once. She approached my daughter in front of friends who weren't aware of the situation and said "Do you recognise me? I'm your social worker". Leaving aside that my daughter felt she (sw) was under the influence of drink or drugs as this is speculative and cannot be proven, can anyone advise me whether this could be regarded as a breach of confidentiality? It caused considerable anxiety, embarrassment and distress to a young woman already suffering mental health issues. There is another issue with the same social worker I will ask about in a separate thread.

I would have thought so.

Yes.

I asked my sw dp about this question (and your other one). DP's opinion is that it's a bit borderline. Even if it's not a breach of confidentiality, it doesn't sound like good professional practice and certainly worth raising as a concern.

Your daughter could make a formal complaint to the local authority. DP's employers would take such a complaint seriously. You should be able to find the complaints procedure on the council web site.

The other route she could go down is to make a complaint via the Health and Care Professionals Council the professional regulator for social workers.

Thank you for your reply, I appreciate it.

I work for the public sector (not as a sw though) and we're told not to acknowledge customers if we run into them socially, unless they acknowledge us first. And even if they do, we're not supposed to refer to work. So, this woman saying "hi" to her was not exactly great, and mentioning social services was even worse.

Thank you. In fact it turned out to be slightly worse: according to witnesses what she actually said was "hello, do you know who I am? I'm your children's social worker". As I explain in my other thread ( re. disability discrimination) a formal complaint has now been raised against her regarding this and similar behaviours and is currently under investigation.