Well done, you made the correct decision.
In your reflective activity, you should have covered all of these points:
- You have made the best choice available to you. You realise that you made mistakes earlier and that the right thing to do now is it accept responsibility for what has happened. Apologising and acknowledging that you should have stopped the conversation about Diane right away, is the right thing to do.
- Discussing a service user’s care package outside of work and without your manager’s guidance was a serious mistake.
- Members of the public overheard your conversation which could damage their confidence in the social services and cause distress to them or to Diane.
- You are showing that you have some awareness of the SSSC Codes of Practice for Social Service Workers. But you need to revisit these codes and make sure that you really understand them.
- It is essential to remember that all social service workers are expected to create and maintain the trust and confidence of people who use services and carers.
- An important part of upholding public trust and confidence in social services is ensuring that you do not abuse the trust of people who use services or carers, or the access you have to personal information about them.
- You must respect confidential information and know your employer’s policies on confidentiality. Service users have the right to expect that they will have their privacy and confidentiality upheld by social service workers in whom they and the public place their trust and confidence.
- You should recognise and use responsibly the power that comes from your work with service users and carers. You are expected to respect and maintain the dignity and privacy of service users. A breach of a service user’s confidentiality may put them at risk of harm.
- You must act in a way that demonstrates you are trustworthy and reliable. Through your actions you earn the trust of colleagues, service users and the public. A failure to follow guidelines on confidentiality constitutes a breach of trust.
- By not taking the correct action in this situation, it could call into question your suitability to be a social services worker. However, the complaint about your behavior could still result in disciplinary action.
When Bob began to talk about Diane outside of work, the correct action to take was to tell Bob right away that you should not discuss this further until you both returned to work. Click here to find out why this was the correct option.
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