A social worker who used other people’s names to sign up for food packages and grocery coupons for struggling families has been convicted of her behavior and ordered to pay $20,000.
Jacqui Wastney was working in Christchurch at the time for VisionWest, which coordinated food parcels from supplier 0800 Hungry to give to those in need.
Over the course of a year, Wastney signed people up for the service, but they never received their boxes. Prosecuting attorneys claimed she kept the food for herself, but a disciplinary court investigating her conduct was unlikely to prove that she was.
However, it found her guilty of misconduct, convicted her and ordered her to pay $20,000 in court costs.
Although Wastney’s crime actually took place from 2017 to 2018, the Social Workers Disciplinary Board held a hearing on the case last year and the results were published today.
According to the decision, the problem with the food parcels came to light when the company she worked for audited their delivery forms and found multiple discrepancies, including changes in the names and ages of customers and their children, and with the addresses listed.
When 0800 Hungry contacted them as part of the internal audit, some of the intended recipients of the food packages reported that they had not received them.
At the hearing, Carol Bensemann, the nonprofit’s warehouse chief, said she first noticed something was wrong when she answered a call from a person Wastney signed up for the service.
“I understand you work 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 alone, but the forms filed by Wastney said there were two adults and four children in the household.
Bensemann stated that when she reviewed the forms previously submitted by Wastney, she noticed that the names “Richard” or “Richards” commonly appeared as first and last names.
She also noted that when comparing two specific forms, the address was the same, but the couple’s names were different, as were the phone numbers and ages of the children.
Bensemann then called about 30 people listed on the forms to ask if they had received a food package from Wastney and about half had no idea what they were talking about.
She then presented her findings to the CEO of 0800 Hungry and Wastney’s manager at VisionWest – Timothy Beale.
He conducted his own audit and produced a spreadsheet that mapped VisonWest’s customers to the forms Wastney had submitted and identified the same discrepancies that Bensemann had discovered.
VisionWest also provided supermarket vouchers to some of its customers and Wastney was the main point of contact for receiving them. However, $320 went missing while in her care and records show they were used in three different supermarkets.
When asked where the vouchers had gone, Wastney bought more of the vouchers and presented them as if they were the originals.
Regarding the forms, Wastney told the tribunal that she had received no training on how to fill them out correctly and that she had seen other employees either neglect them or leave them to the last minute and submit them en masse.
She strongly denied appropriating “a single pack or grocer”. However, she admitted to returning forms for other staff members and accepted that she was wrong.
She said she never questioned getting food packages for people who VisionWest didn’t have a contract for and that she “just wanted to help people the 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 unfairness in obtaining the food packages.
But it has not been established that Wastney is likely to have taken the food packages for herself or her family.
“The tribunal was not satisfied that there was sufficient evidence to support a finding that Ms Wastney personally benefited from her actions.”
However, it turned out that she took the $320 in supermarket vouchers for her own benefit.
The tribunal said Wastney was not as transparent to her employers as she could have been.
“Social workers are expected not to put themselves in a position where they can act to the detriment of clients,” it said.
“While there was no evidence of actual loss or harm to customers as a result of Ms Wastney’s conduct, she misappropriated vouchers and food packages intended for customers.”
“The tribunal was satisfied that when Ms Wastney’s dishonest acts are objectively considered contrary to the standards that the public and the profession expect of social workers, the conduct was a serious departure from those standards and without doubt the social work profession discredits.”
– By Jeremy Wilkinson
– Open Justice multimedia journalist, Palmerston North