Michelle Hayden-Pepper West Essex Children’s Social Care
Michelle Hayden-Pepper is the Director of Local Delivery for West Essex Children’s Social Care.
There are four quadrants in Essex, each have their own director.
Each Director reports directly to Helen Lincoln, the executive director.
West Essex covers Harlow and a few small villages surrounding Harlow.
Michelle has been the director since January 2021.
Under her are a number of Service Manager who are in charge of different divisions regarding children’s social care.
I will only be talking about the two divisions that I had contact with.
Kiran Box/Kirnvir Kaur Box is the Service Manager for Assessment and Intervention and has been since September 2020.
Bianka Lang is the Service Manager for Family Support and Protection, as well as the service manager for the Woodlands Family centre, and has been since October 2020.
The Service Managers are in charge of the team managers, and under the team managers you have the social workers.
I wrote the following post regarding Kiran Box the other day, I shared it on Twitter and tagged Michelle in it. It is a public protection concern as if a member of the public wanted to check that Kiran is a registered social worker they would be unable to due to Kiran using a different name and having deleted her place of employment.
My thoughts were that Michelle would see it and make sure that Kiran abides by the rules.
Absolutely not going to happen.
I decided to check out Michelle’s entry on the social work register at SWE. While her name is correct, her place of employment is listed as London, which was her previous employment before January 2021, so she isn’t following the SWE rules as she hasn’t updated it. She would have been prompted to do it when she renewed her registration in November 2021. The rules state she should, she obviously does not care for rules.
So I checked out Bianka’s as well. No place of employment entered. Given that Bianka has been continuously employed by Essex County Council since 2004 that is very strange. Her previous roles were in Chelmsford. So if she had that listed then she has purposefully lied and deleted it.
So you have the three most senior social workers in West Essex, the three who are meant to be leading by example, and all three appear to be unable to follow a simple rule and keep their current place of employment up to date with Social Work England, despite having been told to update all information for their renewal in November.
The three of them are yapping all over the internet about how West Essex is such a great place to work and how it’s more like a family and how employees love it so much, no doubt, they can get away with anything. With the Director refusing to follow rules, it kind of sets the standard for her employees.
West Essex are having a small retention and recruitment issue at the moment, social workers are leaving and nobody wants to replace them. Management has totally changed, so i’m guessing that morale is low and workloads are high.
Each manager should be checking that the employees they are managing are registered, and that they have renewed every year, that is to protect the public.
Obviously Michelle Pepper-Hayden doesn’t actually care, or it may be she even knows that Kiran is registered under a different name and has removed her place of employment, and that Bianka has done the same, and just doesn’t care.
It says a lot when the three most senior social workers in West Essex are crooked enough to think the social worker registration rules don’t apply to them.
So according to Social Work England, what they have done in failing to record their employment, or in the case of Kiran Box, actually deleting her place of employment, could lead to them being suspended or struck off the register.
They can check to see what if Kiran did indeed have Harlow listed as her place of employment and then purposefully deleted in when she renewed in November 2021, they can check to see if Bianka did the same, or removed her place of employment from Chelmsford but didn’t enter in her new place of employment as they have records.
In reality they wouldn’t suspend anyone for that, just strongly remind them of the rules that are there for the safety and protection of the public.
When you go to renew the box where you put in the town where you are currently employed is highlighted, it states that the registrant is required to fill in the town where they work and that it will be published on the register. There is no way that anyone could miss it. Every single bit of information regarding renewal states the importance of filling out your current employment for the protection of the public.
It’s no wonder Essex, especially West Essex, is in such a state and has a retention and recruitment problem. With the top leaders not caring about following even the most basic, simple rules, I wouldn’t want to work there.
They expect service users to do everything they are asked, why should they listen to anyone at West Essex when those at the very top don’t even bother to follow the most basic of rules?
Not having their registration records compliant with the rules of the regulator is also just something I happened to find out and is publicly accessible.
What do they do, and not do, behind closed doors?
I don’t trust them, and as soon as I publish this and share it around to other service users, my guess is that the public are not going to trust them and wonder what other rules they break
Michelle is within a group of 4 who are the second highest in Essex when it comes to social workers, they are the ones that other social workers will respect and look up to, and whom the general public and service users should think of as those who will definitely have the welfare and wellbeing of the children of West Essex in mind.
Not when, for whatever there selfish reasons are, they refuse to follow the registration rules as set out by the regulator, in Kiran’s case, purposefully going and deleting her town of employment so it doesn’t get published.
They describe themselves at West Essex as a family, which would make Michelle, Kiran, and Bianka in a parenting sort of role. Given they are setting no boundaries and themselves acting dishonestly, I don’t rate any of the three as good examples to give the rest of their ‘family’.
There really is no hope for Essex, absolutely none, any hope i’d had of seeing any improvement has totally disappeared with what those three have done. I don’t think i’d want to know what else they do that nobody ever finds out about.
So all that would happen is that Social Work England would give them a stern email about following the rules and tell them to sort out their registration in the same way that almost every single other social worker in the country manages to do.
West Essex is broken beyond repair, there is no fixing it.
I tried, I made complaints, and they refused to investigate them, that is how little they care about putting right what goes wrong.
All they care about is how they look to others, telling the public that it’s a brilliant place to work and that everything is brilliant, meanwhile, the three people telling the public that are breaking rules. The public has a right to know what is going on given that they are employed using public money.
The post I made about Gabriel Lowrie lying to social work england is given people a sense of vindication, i’m not just talking about those who have had dealings with him or West Essex or any other part of Essex. Social Workers are meant to be honest and trustworthy, but when it comes to West Essex they are not, even the top three people with regards to child protection are not honest and trustworthy. People reading the post about Gabriel Lowrie and the irrefutable proof that he lied are able to see that social workers do lie and occasionally do get caught out.
When I say caught out it doesn’t mean anything has or will happen to him due to his lies, given the untrustworthy trio who run West Essex, they don’t actually care about anything like that, and in fact lying is part of the culture there, all I can do is bring it to the publics attention as they have a right to know.
It does make me feel very despondent as there will be other families going through what we went through, more children damaged, more children attempting suicide and nobody actually cares, it’s more about the image.
I’d like to see changes but that isn’t going to happen, just ego’s getting in the way of doing what is best for children.
All I can do is continue to make the public aware about what goes on, and continue making our story public to warn other service users what goes on in West Essex.
A week ago Michelle Hayden-Pepper liked a series of posts on Twitter to do with Boris Johnson and others getting fined over holding parties during lockdown.
One of the posts she has liked states:
LAW BREAKERS CANNOT BE LAW MAKERS
The tweet is all in capitals hence why I wrote it in capitals.
I absolutely agree, those at the top should absolutely be following the law, those who make the rules have to follow the rules.
Except for Michelle of course, she is fine criticising Boris all over Twitter, but also fine with breaking Social Work England’s rules while being heavily involved in making rules for social workers employed at West Essex to follow, not to mention rules for parents and caregivers to follow.
Just like Boris, she’s at the top so the rules don’t apply to her and she doesn’t insist those immediately under her who also make the rules don’t have to follow the rules, although they already know they don’t.
We aren’t talking about a serious breach of the rules, it’s not major, but to the public it is a clear sign that those at the top in West Essex have a disregard for following rules that are put in place for public safety.
If they are that happy to disregard rules where any member of the public can see they have not abided by the rules, what other rules are they breaking?
That is the bigger issue, that they can’t be trusted to act with honesty and integrity.
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