Student social worker receives admonishment for downloading porn

Student social worker Abul Kalam Azad, of east London, has been found guilty of misconduct for accessing 31 pornographic websites on his placement.

A General Social Care Council conduct committee ruled Azad’s behaviour had been “unacceptable”, and placed a two-year admonishment alongside his name on the student social work register.

Azad was four weeks into a placement at the NSPCC when he accessed 167 web-pages of an “adult” or “sexually explicit” nature, in a two-hour period on 2 November 2005.

The conduct committee upheld the allegation that Azad, a second year social work student at Middlesex University at the time, had deliberately downloaded 84 web-pages of adult content from page3.com. Members accepted that other, more graphic images, classified as “sexually explicit” by the NSPCC’s web-filter software, probably appeared as pop-ups.

Misconduct spectrum

Having viewed exhibits of the type of images accessed by Azad, committee chair Geoff Melling said the downloaded images were “at the lower end of the misconduct spectrum”.

He said it was an isolated incident that had presented no risk to the public or service users.

But Melling, chairing the commitee at the GSCC’s headquarters in London, added: “By failing to turn off the computer the registrant demonstrated a lack of judgement and clearly behaved in an inappropriate manner.

Suitability questioned

“He behaved in a way that calls into question his suitability to practice as a social worker. This is a clear breach of code 5.8 in the GSCC code of practice.”

Earlier the committee heard that when confronted with the evidence, Azad, who declined to attend the hearing, “was initially speechless and sat open-mouthed for some time”.

He was dismissed from both the placement and his degree course following the incident.

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