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A residential social worker who failed to inform police an eight-year-old child in her care had run away has been cautioned by the General Social Care Council.

Jillian Outterside was due to collect the child from Paignton Community College, Devon, on 22 February 2008, but left without alerting the local authority, police or college staff to the child's disappearance.

The British Association of Social Workers is calling for better pre- and post-qualifying training on how to deal with drug and alcohol problems among service users.

Last year, a Home Office-funded study found more than half of newly-qualified social workers felt inadequately prepared to work with people with drug and alcohol problems. Since then, little has changed.

Should unions and professional associations do more to engage social work students? This was one of the central questions raised at the first ever student-organised social work conference, which took place at London South Bank University this week.

"When I became a student, I expected BASW or Unison to come to me," said Dan Morton, a second year undergrad and one of the conference organisers. "But it never happened."

Community Care is doing a survey on violence against social workers in light of the Ashleigh Ewing and Shauna Bailey cases earlier this month. So far 29 people have taken part. Of those, 82% have been abused, assaulted or threatened with violence while working in social care. In the majority of cases, the perpetrator was a service user and the social worker was verbally attacked.

A social worker who allegedly had sex with a service user and took her and her family on holiday faces misconduct charges.

Leslie Healey is accused of forming a relationship with the woman in 1998, making a personal loan to her and/or her family of around £5,000 and acting as her child's godparent - therefore breaching professional boundaries.

A social worker was stalked for more than six years by a man she visited as part of a mental health assessment team.

The service user, Richard Jan, made numerous silent phone calls to social worker Shauna Bailey, attempted to torch her car and twice assaulted her, once beating her face repeatedly with a brick. Read more

This is an extreme case, but it raises interesting questions about whether stalking and prolonged abuse is a widespread problem. If so, what is being done to support social workers? Is abuse like this being properly recorded?

Have you ever been stalked by a service user? Have your say on CareSpace

A social worker stole £33,000 over a year from a mentally ill man she was supposed to be looking after.

Jeanette Breedon, 50, was jailed for 15 months at Minshull Street Crown Court in Manchester having admitted four counts of theft at a previous hearing.

Read more on this story in the Manchester Evening News

Lancashire Council has been rapped by the information commissioner after confidential documents were left in furniture sold in a second hand shop.

The Lancashire Telegraph revealed the blunder last year when the customer who bought the county council filing cabinet from a Blackburn second-hand shop came forward. Read more

A social worker who was found guilty of assaulting a 12-year-old boy he was helping to return to school is facing removal from the register today.

Stephen Dent, 54, who works for Croydon Council, became "pink with aggression" when the child refused to go, Croydon Magistrates' Court was told last year.