We love a salacious story here at Community Care, so I'm a little disappointed this one slipped below the radar last week.

Kirsty Green, a care worker in Bristol, was jailed for nine months having stolen £46,000 from an elderly woman to buy sex toys so she could start another career as an Anne Summers party hostess.

Now, as much as we love to bring you a bit of smut on a Tuesday morning, I am rather irked at the reporting of this story.

Both the Daily Mail and the Mirror describe Green as a carer. This is not true, she was a care worker and those two things are very different. One is a job another is something you do, sacrificing your time, with little reward for your own reasons.

It's endemic of the confusion about the role of carers in society, and their low status, that they are confused with professional careers like this so readily. They don't even have their own status in the public mindset. I would not hold up Green as a model of professionalism given this conviction though.

Read the complete post at http://www.communitycare.co.uk/blogs/social-work-blog/2011/09/care-worker-stole-from-pension.html