Care worker drove teenage clients after smoking cannabis

A care worker who smoked cannabis before driving two teenagers home from a concert has been struck off the social care register.

The Care Council for Wales was told yesterday that Leighton Rosser, an adolescent care worker at the time, had driven a 16-year-old service user and his girlfriend from Abergavenny to the concert in Bristol before leaving them to meet friends.

Colleagues reported he was under the influence of drugs when he returned to the care home.

He was struck off for misconduct, driving a service user under the influence of marijuana and attending a care home while under the influence of an illegal substance.

The committee said: “We have a duty to maintain confidence in social care services and it is within the public interest to send a clear message that such misconduct requires appropriate sanction.”

At a disciplinary hearing held by his employer, Rosser had tried to deny he had smoked marijuana. He said he was in the room with people smoking the drug but did not do so himself, though he could have smoked passively.

Yesterday’s hearing was told that he had received a police caution in 2003 for possession of marijuana.

The hearing said Rosser’s actions could have had terrible consequences for the service user, the public and the practitioner himself.

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