A psychologist at Kids Company has avoided being permanently banned from working in the UK after giving class A drugs to a vulnerable young woman she met through the now-defunct charity.
Dr Helen Winter admitted taking MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, and being under its influence with two clients of the charity at a nightclub in south London in January 2014.
She was banned from practising for 12 months at a professional hearing on Wednesday.
The psychologist said she took drugs on several occasions during her leisure time, tested positive for cocaine and let two vulnerable young people, known as clients C and D, stay at her flat.
Winter had denied offering the drug to the client or taking it in front of her in the nightclub toilet, but a Health and Care Professions Council panel found all the charges proven and ruled that Winter’s fitness to practise was impaired.
Following a four-day hearing in London in January, she was given an interim 18-month suspension and on Wednesday was barred from the register for 12 months, stopping her from working as a practitioner psychologist in the UK.
Panel chair Penny Griffith said Winter – who did not attend Wednesday’s hearing – had breached professional boundaries on more than one occasion.
“The conduct was extremely serious, demonstrated a failure to maintain appropriate therapeutic boundaries and was a significant breach of trust, particularly given the vulnerability of the young people concerned,” she said.
But she said the panel also recognised that Winter had made partial admissions about her behaviour and the incidents had taken place at a “difficult period in her life”.
Griffith added: “The panel concluded that the risk of repetition was very low and that the registrant had demonstrated heartfelt remorse and a level of insight into her own failings.“To impose the more restrictive sanction of striking off the register would be punitive and disproportionate at this stage.”
She said that the year would allow Winter “significant time to remedy her shortcomings” and suggested that a review panel at the end of the order should ensure that she had undergone “continued and up-to-date training”.
Winter took MDMA with a colleague, teacher Nicci Shall, from the Urban Academy, a pupil referral unit run by Kids Company in Southwark, south London.
Shall said they had been drinking since 4pm and later bought MDMA, which they took in the Hidden club where they saw clients C and D, who were in their early 20s. Later, Shall went to a toilet cubicle with Winter and client C, a woman who she taught at the academy. Shall said she watched the pair take drugs.
During the four-day hearing, Winter wept as she pleaded with the panel to allow her to maintain her “commitment to helping others in the role of clinical psychologist”. She said she was now drug-free and would not “blur” professional boundaries as she had done at Kids Company.
She admitted she was guilty of misconduct and that her fitness to practise was impaired.