Sharon Mhembere

- v –

The Secretary of State for Health

Application No. [2008] 1291 PVA

Before:

Ms Andrea Rivers
Mrs C. A. Alford
Mrs Wendy Stafford

Heard on 23rd October 2008, at Southampton Employment Tribunal

Samantha Broadfoot of Counsel appeared on behalf of the Respondent.
Sharon Mhembere appeared in person and represented herself.

The Appeal

1.	This was an appeal received by the tribunal on 17th April 2008. Ms Mhembere appealed against a decision, confirmed on 8th February 2008, to include her name on the PoVA list 

Background

2.	In July 2006 the appellant began working as a night care assistant at Merry Hall Nursing and Residential Care Home. The following December there was a CSCI inspection at which it was discovered that the home had not yet obtained a CRB check for her. Although it appears that the manager at that time took steps to remedy this, by March 2007, when a new manager, Pamela Johnson, took over, the CRB check had still not arrived. 
3.	Eventually, on 8th May 2007, it did arrive. It showed that the appellant had a number of convictions for offences of dishonesty. Mrs Johnson noted that none of this information had been disclosed on the appellant’s job application form and that indeed the form showed that she had specifically denied having any criminal convictions.
4.	Mrs Johnson telephoned the appellant and told her that she regarded the fact that she had provided false information on her application form to be a dismissable offence and, in the absence of any explanation from Ms Mhembere which she considered to be satisfactory, she wrote her a letter of dismissal.
5.	She then, on the advice of CSCI, referred the matter to PoVA list who made further investigations and on 8th February 2007 Ms Mhembere’s name was confirmed on the PoVA list.

Evidence

6.	We read a statement and heard oral evidence from Pamela Johnson, on behalf of the respondent, and we heard oral evidence from Ms Mhembere herself.  We were also shown documentation including:
i)	the job application form;
ii)	the CRB disclosure form;
iii)	police computer records of the appellant’s convictions;
iv)	court records of the appellant’s convictions and
v)	two references for the appellant, written in support of her job application.

The Convictions

7.	The information disclosed on the CRB check was confirmed by the police records. The court records were incomplete, but supplied additional, supplementary information. Taken together, these documents provided us with information about her convictions. 
8.	On 8th December 2003 Ms Mehmbere was convicted of fifteen offences of false accounting at Guildford Crown Court, with eleven other offences taken into consideration. These offences involved submitting timesheets claiming payment for work which she had not done, signed by a friend of hers. The total amount claimed was £7,500 and the employer was Bettercare Health Services. Eleven other offences were taken into consideration (TICs). For all these offences she was sentenced to 60 hours Community Punishment Order and 18 months Community Rehabilitation Order.
9.	On 20th August 2004, at East Dorset Magistrates Court, she was convicted of two offences of receiving stolen goods, two offences of forgery and two offences of using a false instrument. There were a further fifty-one TICs. According to the CRB disclosure the offences related to three stolen credit cards and she was sentenced to 120 hours Community Punishment Order.
10.	On 28th December 2005, at Woking Magistrates Court, she was convicted of breaching the Community Punishment and Rehabilitation Order. The court record shows that she admitted the offence and that no separate penalty was imposed.
11.	At an early stage in these proceedings the respondent asked Ms Mhembere whether or not she accepted these convictions.
12.	In a letter dated 11th August 2008 Ms Mhembere wrote a letter in which she admitted the convictions for the fifteen offences in relation to the falsified timesheets and two offences of handling stolen goods. She did not accept the offence of breaching the Community Punishment and Rehabilitation Order. 
13.	In her oral evidence to us she also accepted that the sum of money falsely claimed amounted to £7,500. She agreed that she had accepted liability for TICs but told us that she had not understood what she was agreeing to at the time and now denied these additional offences. She also told us that the credit card offences related to the theft and use by her of her mother’s credit card and no other cards. She remained adamant that she had not breached her Community Punishment and Rehabilitation Order.

The Law

14.  S86(3) of the Care Standards Act 2000 provides that:

If on an appeal or determination under this section the Tribunal is not satisfied of either of the following, namely –
(a) that the individual was guilty of misconduct…which harmed or placed at risk of harm a vulnerable adult; and
(b)	that the individual is unsuitable to work with vulnerable adults,

the Tribunal shall allow the appeal…
15.    It is for the respondent to prove their case on balance of probability.

Findings

Was there misconduct which harmed or placed at risk of harm a vulnerable adult?

16.	The misconduct relied upon by the respondent was that of giving false 
         information on the application form. She omitted all reference to her convictions 
         and falsely claimed to be an honest person and to have no convictions. She did 
         this in a number of places on the form: 
(i)	In the section headed “Previous jobs” she failed to include her work for Bettercare Health Services, the employer whom she had defrauded by make false claims for work she had not done.
(ii) In the section where she was asked to explain why she was suitable for the  
      job she specifically used the words: “I am… an honest person”, in support  
      of her application.
(iii) At the end of the form she signed the following declaration:
            	I declare that to the best of my knowledge and belief 
            the information given on this form is true, and I 
            understand that giving any false information or leaving 
            out important information will make my application
            unacceptable and, if I am appointed, may lead to my
            dismissal.
(iv) Attached to the application form was a sheet headed: Rehabilitation of  
       Offenders  Act 1984 (Exceptions) Order 1975. It asked: Have you ever   
        been convicted of any criminal offence(s)? There was a box marked 
        “Yes” and a box marked “No”. The form ended with the words: 

           “A criminal conviction will not necessarily lead to the refusal of your 
             application. However, failure to disclose any conviction could lead 
             either to your application being refused or, if your application is 
             successful, to cancellation of your registration if it is subsequently 
             learnt that you have a criminal conviction.”

        Ms Mhembere put a cross in the box marked “No” and signed at the end
        of the form, immediately below the warning about the consequences of  
        non-disclosure.
16.	Her explanation for not mentioning her convictions was that she had been told by her probation officer that she did not have to disclose convictions over a year old. However, in our view, this cannot account for the repeated instances of false or misleading information shown on the form. In any event, her most recent conviction, for breach of the Community Punishment and Rehabilitation Order, was in December 2005, and she filled out the application form in June 2006, only six months later. The fact that she denies this last offence is contradicted by evidence in the court record showing that she appeared in court and admitted it.
17.	Taking all the above evidence into account, we find that she intentionally filled out the application forms in such a way as to conceal her past history of dishonesty and falsely to present herself as an honest person, and that this constituted misconduct.
18.	We also find that she sought to minimise her history of offending in her evidence to us by claiming that she was not responsible for the TICs and that the credit card offences related only to one card. The police records are clear and likely to be reliable and we think it more likely than not that they are correct. 

Risk of Harm
19.	In her statement Mrs Johnson describes Ms Mhembere’s job as follows:
(…it) involved providing personal care to up to 32 vulnerable adults. Generally, the residents at Merry Hall do not have dementia, but some do and some have very limited ability to communicate, following strokes. Ms Mhembere would have to have met all residents’ needs……and, when working at nights, she would largely have been working alone.
20.	Clearly such a client group would be extremely vulnerable to exploitation, 
      including financial exploitation. Mrs Johnson’s evidence was that had Merry Hall   
      been aware of Ms Mhembere’s convictions they would have regarded her as 
      posing so great a risk to the people in their care that they would not have 
      employed her. 
21.	We agree that because of her history of dishonesty, as evidenced by her 
      convictions, she presented a risk to vulnerable adults.
22.	Thus we find that she was guilty of misconduct in providing false and misleading information to her employers, and that this misconduct placed vulnerable adults at risk.

Is she unsuitable to work with vulnerable adults

23.	In the letter of dismissal which Mrs Johnson sent to Ms Mhembere she wrote: “I 
am sorry that I have had to take this action as I believe you were a promising carer”. Similarly, one of Ms Mhembere’s references, from her team leader at Haven House, where she had previously been employed as a care assistant, described her as “very good towards residents, caring and understanding.” There was nothing to suggest that she had ever behaved unkindly or unprofessionally towards those in her care.
24.	Ms Mhembere told us that she acknowledged her past mistakes and that she was a  
      now a changed person.
25.	Nevertheless, the evidence of her dishonesty is overwhelming. She was guilty of 
      a large number of offences, committed recently and over a sustained period and 
      involving a substantial sum of money. She compounded this dishonesty by 
      providing false and misleading information to her employers, to conceal her 
      history of convictions. 
26.	We could not accept that she was a changed person and that her honesty could 
now be relied on, because, as we have found, she continued to give untruthful and inconsistent evidence to us in these proceedings. We therefore find that she is not a suitable person to care for vulnerable adults.

Decision
27.	We find that the test, as set out in s86(3) of the Care Standards Act has been  
      satisfied. Ms Mhembere committed an act of misconduct by giving false    
      and misleading information in her application form, thus putting 
      vulnerable adults at risk. For the reasons set out above she is also unsuitable to
      work with vulnerable adults.
28.	It is therefore the unanimous decision of the tribunal that her appeal be dismissed.

Appeal dismissed

Dated: 12th November 2008

Ms Andrea Rivers
Mrs C. A. Alford
Mrs Wendy Stafford