Social work case notes are dumped

Fiona Howard • Published 20 May 2010 10:50 0 Comments

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HIGHLY sensitive social work case notes and documents relating to Helensburgh families have been found dumped in a black plastic bag.

The sack of documents, all referring to clients of the Helensburgh Social Work department's children with disabilities section, was found among a load of items "fly-tipped" at an empty property in Glen Fruin.

And now Argyll and Bute Council has launched a thorough investigation into how the confidential information was allowed to end up in a dump site and have promised disciplinary action should that be appropriate following their inquiries.

A Helensburgh mum, whose son was one of the clients whose papers ended up in Glen Fruin, said: "I am very surprised by this. I will be asking for an explanation of what has happened.

"It doesn't say much for the council's data protection systems and I wouldn't have thought that that sort of paperwork should have been allowed to be taken out of the office.

"Have they not heard of shredders?"

The bag of paperwork was found on an old armchair which was dumped at Tigh-na-Blair in Glen Fruin.

The owner of the property, a cottage and former boarding kennel which is empty and on the market, said: "We did put a gate up to stop people dumping rubbish on the property but it was stolen.

"We replaced that with a chain but that From front page

was also stolen last week and I knew that someone would choose to use the site as a fly tip and have been keeping a regular check on it.

"Unfortunately on Sunday, somebody did some fly tipping on the site and left amongst other things, a computer, tumble dryer, chairs, pram and kids toys.

"When I investigated the rubbish to see if there was any evidence of who had done this, I found a plastic bag, full of paperwork on one of the chairs.

"I took this home as it was late and on closer inspection, I could see this paperwork appeared to have come from an Argyll and Bute Council employee, one name seemed to prevail, namely a social worker on the children with disabilities team.

"This paperwork contains many sheets detailing information regarding children in 2008 - reports containing names, conversations, suggestions, etc.

"This is obviously quite sensitive information which shouldn't have been thrown away, let alone dumped like this."

A council officer removed most of the paperwork an hour after she called to report the find and the rest was collected on Tuesday from the Advertiser office.

Argyll and Bute Council leader, Councillor Dick Walsh, said: "This has clearly been a serious breach, and we are in the process of carrying out a thorough investigation into how it happened.

"We have made a concerted effort to contact the families of the clients affected to inform them of the situation and to apologise to them in person.

"Argyll and Bute Council takes its responsibilities in relation to data security extremely seriously, and it is a matter of deep regret that this has occurred.

"We will be working very hard to ensure that this kind of incident does not happen again.

"Disciplinary action will be taken should the results of our investigation indicate that this is appropriate."

* The council, however, will not be clearing the rest of the rubbish from the dump site. It is private ground so they say it is the responsibility of the owners to remove the rubbish.

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