A Lanarkshire carer who stole £5,500 from a vulnerable resident has been struck off the register.
Robert Muir took the money from a service user on eight occasions between October 2021 and April 2022 while employed as a support worker at an undisclosed centre in North Lanarkshire.
On three occasions, Mr Muir took the service user to a bank to withdraw money from their account, which was given to Mr Muir. This included £1,500 on October 7 and another £1,500 on October 18.
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Mr Muir later withdrew money from the service user's account when they were not present, taking £500 on five separate occasions and keeping the money for himself.
The Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) has now removed him from the register, condemning his actions for causing "financial and emotional harm to a vulnerable service user".
The decision reads: "You obtained a substantial amount of money from a vulnerable service user and retained the money for yourself on a number of occasions over an extended period of time. Your behaviour has caused financial and emotional harm to a vulnerable service user.
"Your behaviour breached professional boundaries and exploited a vulnerable service user for your own financial gain. Your behaviour was dishonest and fundamentally incompatible with professional registration.
"Your behaviour demonstrates a pattern of extremely serious misconduct and financial exploitation. You have not achieved remediation or taken meaningful steps to do so. This indicates serious and unresolved values issues fundamentally incompatible with professional registration.
"Accordingly, there is a genuine and foreseeable risk that the behaviour may be repeated in the future should you be allowed to continue to work in social services. Were the behaviour to be repeated, this would be highly serious and pose a significant risk to service users and public confidence in the profession."
