Well done, you made the correct decision.
Here are some points that you need to consider. You should have included these in your reflective activity.
- You have made the right decision. The right thing to do now is to contact Chelsea, ask to meet her and support her complaint. Your lack of action so far has made the situation worse. Your actions now will go some way towards putting things right but you need to take responsibility for your role in what has happened.
- You made a mistake when you had an informal chat with Brenda to tell her about Chelsea’s complaint. This breached Chelsea’s trust and placed her wellbeing at risk. Trying to deal with the situation informally looks like you were protecting Brenda and giving her favourable treatment.
- When you did not treat Chelsea’s original complaint seriously you were not meeting the standards expected of a social service manager. The SSSC Code of Practice for Social Service Workers says that you must make it clear that bullying is not acceptable. It is your duty to take action to deal with such behaviour.
- You need a better understanding of procedures that enable workers to report bullying behaviour. You also need to know how to promote these more actively. In future you must deal with reports promptly, effectively and openly.
- Not doing the right thing promptly could undermine confidence in your organisation’s capacity to promote rights. It also led to the situation getting worse. You need to demonstrate through your actions that you are trustworthy, reliable and dependable.
- You need to do more learning to develop a better understanding of how power relationships can be used and abused. You also need to learn about the impact of stress and conflict on organisational performance and retention of staff.
- You need to strengthen your commitment to communicating with your team openly and to promoting the wellbeing of all workers. Your employer can help you to identify your training needs and to meet them.
When Chelsea reported her complaint the right thing to do was to treat it seriously, make enquiries to establish the facts and if appropriate support Chelsea to make a formal complaint in line with your organisation’s complaints procedures. Find out why this was the right thing to do here.
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