The food parcels never made it to the intended clients. Photo / 123rf
A social worker who used other people’s names to sign up for food parcels and supermarket vouchers meant for struggling families has been censured for her conduct and ordered to pay $20,000.
Jacqui Wastney was working for VisionWest in Christchurch at the time, which co-ordinated food parcels from supplier 0800 Hungry to give to people in need.
Over the course of a year Wastney signed people up for the service but they never actually received their boxes. Prosecuting lawyers alleged she was keeping the food for herself but a disciplinary tribunal investigating her conduct couldn’t prove on the balance of probabilities that she was.
It did, however, find her guilty of misconduct, censuring her and ordering her to pay $20,000 in court costs.
While Wastney’s offending actually occurred from 2017 until 2018, the Social Workers Disciplinary Tribunal held a hearing into the matter last year and the results were published today.
According to the decision, the food parcel issue was uncovered when the company she worked for conducted an audit of their delivery forms and discovered multiple discrepancies, including changes in the names and ages of clients and their children, and with the listed addresses.
When contacted by 0800 Hungry as part of its internal audit, some of the intended recipients of the food parcels advised that they had not received them.
At the hearing, the non-profit’s warehouse supervisor Carol Bensemann said she first noticed something was amiss when she fielded a call from a person Wastney had signed up for the service.
“I understand you’re working with Jacqui” she asked him, but the man told her “no, I don’t know who that is”. Bensemann said the man was single and living on his own and yet the forms submitted by Wastney had said there were two adults and four children in the household.
Bensemann stated when she reviewed the forms previously submitted by Wastney she noticed the names “Richard” or “Richards” commonly appeared as first and last names.
She also noticed that when comparing two specific forms, the address was the same but the couple’s names were different as was the phone number and the children’s ages.
Bensemann went on to call around 30 people listed on the forms to ask whether they had received a food parcel from Wastney and about half had no idea what she was talking about.
Following this, she took her findings to the CEO of 0800 Hungry and to Wastney’s manager at VisionWest; Timothy Beale.
He conducted his own audit and produced a spreadsheet mapping VisonWest clients with the forms Wastney had submitted which identified the same discrepancies Bensemann had discovered.
VisionWest also provided supermarket vouchers to some of its clients and Wastney was the key liaison to receive them. However, $320 worth went missing while in her care and records show they were used at three different supermarkets.
When questioned about where the vouchers had gone Wastney purchased more of the vouchers and presented them as if they were the originals.
In relation to the forms, Wastney told the tribunal she hadn’t received training on how to fill them out correctly and had watched other employees either neglect to do them or leave them until the last moment and bulk-submit them.
She vehemently denied misappropriating “a single parcel or grocery item”. However, she admitted to returning forms for other staff members and accepted she was wrong in doing so.
She said she never questioned getting food parcels for people who VisionWest did not have contracts for and that she “just wanted to assist people as best I could”.
However, the tribunal ruled that due to the “falsification of details on the forms and the lack of clarity with 0800 Hungry” there was dishonesty involved in obtaining the food parcels.
But it was not established that on the balance of probabilities Wastney took the food parcels for herself or her family.
“The tribunal was not satisfied there was a sufficient evidential basis for a finding that Ms Wastney personally gained or benefitted from her actions.”
It did find, however, that she took the $320 in supermarket vouchers for her own benefit.
The tribunal said Wastney was not as transparent with her employers as she could have been.
“Social workers are expected not to put themselves in a position where they may act to the detriment of clients,” it said.
“While there was no evidence of actual loss or detriment to clients because of Ms Wastney’s behaviour, she did misappropriate vouchers and food parcels that were meant for clients.”
“The tribunal was satisfied that when Ms Wastney’s dishonest acts are considered objectively against the standards which the public and the profession expect of social workers, the conduct was a serious departure from those standards and without doubt brings discredit to the social work profession.”