A National Scandal? Care Home Negligence and Local Authority Belligerence

J8KB

Hi all,

My 94 year old mother had Alzheimer's & dementia and was last person admitted into her care home just as lockdown commenced in March 2020. Lots of things went wrong for her because the care home management were under lots of pressure as lockdown loomed. Should Covid and the pandemic be a sufficiently good excuse for a Care Home NOT to meet their duty of Care under the Care Act, to ignore the Mental Health Act when dealing with Alzheimer residents or permit violations and infringements of the vulnerable and elderly's Human Rights? Needless to say, her death was most likely speeded up by careless negligence rather then Covid. 

We all suffered with Covid, and I had loads of sympathy for the care home, until I found out they lied, backdated documents to support their "innocence", fabricated some notes and generally misled a local authority safeguarding investigation, who were so stupid never to ask for supporting evidence from the home. The safeguarding report completely exonerated the home contrary to the plethora of proof contained in the report that evidenced details of many breaches in their duty of care. The Local authority was so embarrassed when I went through the report, and pointed out how wrong their conclusions were, that they had to reopen another enquiry. But then they deliberately sabotaged it so as, perhaps to sweep the original enquiry under the table. 

When initially assessed the care home missed identifying my mothers hearing or visual issues, they did arrange an advocate at the assessment, therefore did not find out about her medical history and negligently did not even did not corroborate the accuracy of their assessment with me and so did not pick up that she had an open ended DNR in place.

They implemented a substandard care that did not meet all her needs, treated her as if she had full mental capacity and could see and hear without issues. The resulting care created many issues of multiple anxiety attacks (principally TV too loud to hear her callers when they were able to put a call through - the only potentially healing break from the isolation and the unfamiliar surroundings with masked strangers). The care home even made up an end of life (EOL) care plan without consultation (with a dementia patient who forgot everything within 10 minutes), so violated her human rights when they attempted resuscitation on her when her heart stopped. During a safeguarding enquiry by a partisan and completely incompetent local authority, it was found that the EOL plan was dated during the week my mother was not even in the home, and was an inpatient in hospital (i.e. not available in the home discussing her EOL plans) having blood transfusions. This with other notes, implied the home had neglected her, had made up the written notes and were covering up their tracks by backdating them. There is other evidence that the home frequently lied to the safeguarding inquiry team who unfortunately could not be bothered to really investigate hence the sloppy conclusion to exonerate the home from any wrong doing. 

How can I get justice for my mum and more safety for all the future patients and their families of the care home who are intent to cover up their mistakes at any cost - including slandering to me to undermine my complaint. And how to get a local authority to organise an independent review of their incompetence because they did not follow due process? 

Jeremy535897

Try the Ombudsman at https://www.lgo.org.uk/adult-social-care/how-we-can-help

MalMonroe

Hi, I'm so sorry for your loss and also for the awful experiences suffered by your whole family. 

As Jeremy535897 suggests, you could try contacting the Ombudsman.

You could also write to your local counsellor and your MP. If they are anything like ours, they will try to help.

https://members.parliament.uk/FindYourMP

https://www.gov.uk/find-your-local-councillors

Thank you for wanting to help others in similar circumstances. All the very best to you.