Scottish Social Services Council Reviews 5

As a care worker I have no choice but to be on the SSSC register and I get charged for this - initial registration and an annual fee. As one of the lowest paid workers in the UK, I don’t understand why it cost me annually to tick a few boxes. It’s an automated system with no humans involved. That’s 2 hours pay I donate to SSSC every year.

The SSSC does not investigate complaints that have been denied, when the most scandalous of social service conduct is solidly evidenced. As such, they do not regulate them. Disgust doesn't cover it given the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman uses the exact same loophole. Shame on both.

I had a really bad experience with the SSSC. I made a complaint about the cruelty and ill treatment of a vulnerable person in a care home. There were independent eyewitness accounts, written records and medical evidence, all supporting my complaint. It took the SSSC more than 6 years to eventually throw my complaint out and take no action whatsoever against the workers involved. The reasons for this are withheld from me - on the grounds of legal privilege and confidentiality. Then, you can only challenge the SSSC decision via judicial review, which is out of reach for all but the very wealthy. This lack of transparency and accountability is unacceptable. And in this case, the SSSC seems to me to have been more concerned with protecting its registrants, than the vulnerable people they harm. My advice to anyone else thinking of making a similar complaint is this - forget the SSSC. I had much better experiences with the Care Inspectorate and Police Scotland. And at least these bodies are accountable for their decisions.

Dealing with the SSSC is like dealing with some bureaucratic organization that seem to want to take the longest route possible to try to accomplish the simplest task.
Having recently uploaded some qualifications via their website, I have entered into a vastly over-complicated back and forward about what they will accept. It is seemingly more acceptable for the SSSC to squint to read a grainy & poor quality mobile phone photo upload than to have a beautifully legible scanned document via my employer's printer.
As a former business professional coming to care & support later in life, I sadly have found most organizations connected with the care industry to be poorly organized & with low professional standards, the SSSC just reinforces this to me.
Luckily, I have a fairly good local employer & some excellent colleagues to work with but my advice to the SSSC would be to try to be a more efficient organization & stop wallowing in bureaucracy.

Absolutely incompetent beyond belief.
They spent 10 years investigating a complaint against a social worker and had all the information they needed to put the case to a hearing but then they got all the facts wrong. They were corrected on numerous occasions but still didnt fix the issues and still concluded the complaint on false information. They did not include all the aspects of the complaint that was asked of them.
They failed to follow their own procedures during the investigation
They stated that work was being done on the case when it sat in a cabinet for years.
They did not agree the aspects with me and despite being told on numerous occasions that the complaint was not correct as the social worker had in fact altered important information on an important document, they still did not get things right.
They blamed it on human error and that the "mistake" just kept being passed down the line amongst a multitude of staff.
They spent nearly £20,000 of public money on the case which didnt include their own staff costs and then it didnt even get to a hearing because an independent panel decided that the case had gone on for too long and that too many mistakes had been made by the SSSC in their handling of the case.
They had all the information they needed to put the case to a hearing years ago but they then left it sitting in limbo.
They have effectively allowed a corrupt social worker to continue to stay on the register despite lying about visits, altering documents and destroying evidence.
After all their "mistakes" they then think it's ok to simply offer "We're very sorry" that we made so many mistakes dispite being told that things weren't correct and we're sorry that basically you have no right to an appeal,,,, but you can go to the SPSO.
Quite simply, if you make a complaint about a social worker, even if you have evidence to prove they breached the codes of conduct, you cannot rely on the SSSC to act honestly.
They will convince you that they are taking things seriously while the truth is that they will be doing the exact opposite.
They cannot be trusted and should not have the authority to carry out any investigation on a social worker as a result of a concern raised by a member of the public.
They are an absolute disgrace and there should be an investigation into their levels of incompetence as they are not providing value for money.
How can the public have faith in social workers when the SSSC are themselves "impaired" by their utter inability to follow procedures and to carry out investigations when there was more than sufficient evidence to uphold the case.
Don't waste your time with these people.
They do not act in the interests of the public and are basically untouchable with regards to taking them to court unless you have a very large bank balance to pay for judicial reviews.