Social worker offered to urinate on strangers

A social worker who made sexually inappropriate comments to strangers and showed them his social services identity card during a night out in Birkenhead has been struck off.

Police received reports in the early hours of 10 April 2008 that a man describing himself as a social worker had approached young men and women in Argyle Street, Birkenhead, and asked whether he could “piss in their mouths”.

When police arrived they spoke to Darren Mason, an agency social worker, who admitted making the comments.

One of the officers, PC Robert Carey, told the General Social Care Council’s conduct committee that Mason had also admitted using cocaine earlier that night. Mason was not present at the hearing.

The police warned Mason about his future conduct but he was not arrested. The incident was brought to the attention of a senior manager in Salford Council’s social services department, where Mason was on placement.

Mason gave his manager a “completely false account” of what had happened, the conduct committee found.

He told her he had been approached by two young women he had previously encountered through his work at the council. Mason said the women had accused him of involving them in “some sort of sexual orgy”, but that the police had subsequently questioned him and accepted his explanation of the events.

Salford Council terminated Mason’s placement and he was removed from the books of his employment agency Liquid Personnel.

However, Mason failed to disclose that Salford had terminated his placement when applying to renew his registration with the GSCC on 10 July 2008.

The conduct committee found this dishonesty, along with the false account of events Mason had given to the manager at Salford Council, “compounded the seriousness of the matter”.

The committee said removal from the register was the only suitable sanction. “The behaviour was of such a nature and degree as to cause dismay to members of the public and, by virtue of its serious departure from the relevant standards in the code [of practice], would bring the social work profession into disrepute,” it said.

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