Social worker condemned for ‘unethical’ sexual relationship with former client

The actions of a social worker who struck up a friendship and then a sexual relationship with her former client have been labelled “unprofessional and unethical” by a watchdog.

On Monday, Deputy Health and Disability Commissioner Dr Vanessa Caldwell found the social worker in breach of the patients’ rights code for not maintaining appropriate boundaries with the former client, referred to as Ms A.

The social worker was contracted to provide therapy services to ACC’s sensitive claims clients – those who have experienced sexual violence. From March 2017, she saw Ms A 34 times over the course of a year.

Towards the end of therapy, Ms A was going to sessions twice a week. She said they would “lie on the couch together”, Caldwell’s decision showed.

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“[The social worker] would sit there and I would have my head in her lap… I was not aware that this was not usual in therapy.”

In February 2018, the social worker visited Ms A at home as she was feeling suicidal. She was “very intoxicated” – the social worker rang police and the crisis team and Ms A went to an emergency department.

After the incident, the social worker terminated therapy with Ms A, due to “concerns for her mental health”. She was “unsure that therapy for [Ms A’s] … abuse is helpful at this time given the other difficulties she is experiencing with her drinking and low mood”.

About three months later, the pair started seeing each other as friends.

They would spend time together “pretty much every day” – sometimes with the social worker’s husband and at Ms A’s house with her children: playing cards, or lying on the couch “spooning” and watching movies.

They first had sex in November 2018 and agreed “it would not happen again”, the decision showed.

The social worker “immediately regretted [being intimate with Ms A] … as I was married and was concerned about the ethical boundary issues as [she] was a former client. I acknowledged to [Ms A] we had crossed a line.”

Ms A received flowers and a letter from the social worker in February 2019 stating their friendship was “wrong” and that she crossed professional boundaries by befriending her.

“That same day I got the letter I [harmed myself] and ended up in hospital. It was all too much. I was hysterical,” Ms A said.

Ms A complained to the Social Workers Registration Board, which said she had “recently come to realise the social worker had a professional role to stop [the relationship] from eventuating”.

Ms A initially “loved the friendship”, but in hindsight understood “the damage and impact that [the] friendship had on [her] mental and physical health” – which continued to “get in the way of my therapy”.

The social worker initially thought there was no power imbalance and a personal relationship was appropriate as Ms A was no longer a client. On refection, she accepted the relationship “was inappropriate and should have never occurred”.

In her decision, Caldwell found the social worker acted unprofessionally by failing to maintain appropriate boundaries and engaging in an intimate relationship with a former client.

“It was wholly inappropriate for her to have entered into a sexual relationship with her former client and I am critical that she did so.”

There was a “clear power imbalance” given how the therapeutic relationship started and ended, and “clear evidence” of Ms A’s “vulnerabilities” during their professional relationship, Caldwell said.

She recommended the social worker provide a written apology to Ms A and undertake further training on maintaining professional boundaries with clients.

Caldwell also recommended the registration board consider whether a review of the social worker’s competence or conduct was warranted and to report back.