News

A health visitor who ignored warnings that children were at risk of abuse has been struck off the nursing register for professional misconduct.

Veronica Egenamba, 57, was found guilty by the UKCC, the nurses regulatory body, of two charges of misconduct after failing to maintain patient records and not co-operating with other professionals. An internal investigation revealed that 102 vulnerable clients had not been referred to the correct agencies.

But the nurse's conduct committee hearing was told City and Hackney Community Services NHS Trust failed to spot the backlog of work at Egenamba's office for four years. Child protection adviser Julie Barker had noted Egenamba's incompetence in December 1998 during a training session.

"She said she had no child protection concerns on any families in her caseload, which surprised me. She was working with an extremely vulnerable client group and had 300 families," said Barker. "She thought refugee families were always loving to their children and therefore there would be no families with child protection concerns. She also said that she would not raise any concerns about a child that may be at risk of harm because it took two years to build a relationship of trust with the parents."

No action was taken until a fellow health visitor became concerned after receiving five requests for a file that could not be located. Egenamba denied she had the records, but they were found along with two envelopes containing child protection issues.

Her room was littered with records on desks, window sills and in boxes on the floor. Many of the records were more than 18 months old.

"The thing that most concerned me was that child protection matters had not been acted on or sent to the appropriate agencies," Egenamba's line manager Gloria Thomas told the hearing. "I spoke to Mrs Egenamba and she told me she had to do all the work herself and found it difficult to keep up."

Egenamba did not attend the hearing but had previously told a disciplinary hearing that she had no help and nobody else could understand her work.

She was sacked from her post after a disciplinary hearing in October 1999.