Social worker jailed for £29,000 worth of benefit fraud admits misconduct at GSCC hearing

A social worker who was jailed for £29,000 worth of benefit fraud has admitted misconduct at a General Social Care Council hearing in London.

Evelyn Mnene admitted nine allegations that she had repeatedly given false employment details to potential or actual employers and had failed to disclose information.

They included providing contact details for a false referee, claiming to have worked for a non-existent organisation and failing to declare that she was the subject of a criminal investigation for fraud in her application to register with the GSCC in March 2005.

Mnene was sentenced to nine months imprisonment in February 2006, after pleading guilty to 10 counts of criminal fraud at Harrow Magistrates’ Court.

GSCC counsel Neil Grant said Mnene’s “history of misconduct” was recent and stretched back over seven years from 1999 to 2006.

Mnene, who attended the hearing but was too distressed to read her statement, admitted her behaviour had been “disgraceful” but said she had learned her lesson and that she needed to “live within my means”.

She had stolen the money to pay medical bills for her brother, who had contracted HIV and later died, in her home country of Kenya.

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Sally Gillen