Assessment

[nunny]

My husband and I are nearly at the end of our Assessment before going to the panel. Does an assessing Social Worker have automatic rights to gain access to our older married childrens past medical history ie. when they were 19 years of age. Would they have to have gained permission ie. like we had to for a CRB check to be completed or can Social Workers access any information about our family during the assessment process. We feel upset as its us that is going through the assessment not our older children.

[David Roth]

All the information that social workers get access to has to be done with the permission of the person whose information they are accessing. At the beginning of the assessment, you should have been asked to sign a form giving your permission to them getting a number of different references. You would also have had to sign specific forms giving permission for them to get medical information from your GP about your health check, and each person whose police record was being checked would have had to sign their own form. Social workers would have to get your son's signed consent before they could access his medical records.

It is only normally the main carers who would have a medical examination and have their medical histories disclosed. However, it is possible that one of the other referees who knows your family might have disclosed the information about your son's history that you allude to. For example, your personal referees might have mentioned something, or it may have showed up on one of the other references they sought.

What the social workers do would depend on how involved your son was going to be with the child/ren you're being assessed for. I gather from your post that your son has left home and is married, but if for example he is the person you would ask to babysit then they would probably be a bit more thorough than if you rarely see him.

If your son did have a medical episode of some sort when he was 19, then the assessing social worker's main concern would probably be: how did you as his parents deal with it and support him at the time?

[nunny]

Thank you for your prompt reply. The information gained was not of our son but our daughter who has not given any consent as it really does not concern her. Its our sons children. I do know that my daughter would be really upset if she thought her records had been looked at. Our referees would not have disclosed other family members medical histories. I just wanted to check if it was normal to go through all the families records.

[David Roth]

The standard medical form that applicants' GPs are asked to fill in about them does contain a question about whether there are any hereditary conditions in the family. If there was a genetic condition that you had passed down to your children, then that might have been stated on your GP's form. Other than that, I do not see how your daughter's medical information might emerge, except in the ways I suggested above.

It would certainly not be normal to go through anyone's records without signed agreement. In fact, it would be a breach of data protection legislation, unless the information was given specifically to protect a child who was at risk.

[nunny]

Thank you David I thought that was the case.