Care Home Death (UK)

Care home death: 'Nobody should die in such a terrible, cruel way'
By David Harrison
Last Updated: 1:53AM BST 25/05/2008

A culture of 'wilful neglect' led to Peter Giles's death in a care home – and it was not an isolated case. A fundamental change in the system is needed, says David Harrison.
Ken Giles is staring at a photograph of his brother. In the picture Peter Giles is in soldier's uniform, standing to attention, holding the Sword of Honour awarded to him as the most promising recruit to the Army Catering Corps. He looks proud, ambitious, a man with a bright future.

But today Ken is struggling to understand how his brother was allowed to die, lying unconscious, sweating and dehydrated, wearing soiled clothes, in a care home. "Nobody should die like that," says Ken, as we talk at his home in Poulton, Lancashire.

"When a relative goes into a care home you expect them to do just that: care for and look after that relative. Care home? Peter was in a Nobody Cares home."

Last week Ken and his wife Sue, both 56, were at Preston Crown Court to see Kathleen Vitturini, 62, the owner of Abbeycroft care home in Blackpool, jailed for six months for her "wilful neglect" of Peter.
Ken is still angry at the appalling way his brother was treated by untrained and uncaring staff who, he says, were "always smoking and drinking tea", and a boss who was never there, except when there was money to be collected.

"We were told that they refused to feed him unless he came down in the lift on his own, which he couldn't do. When we were away they were giving him hardly anything to eat or drink. My sister Pat and daughter Kirsty went in to see him and told staff that he was becoming dehydrated. They said they would sort it out but they did nothing.

Abuse of the elderly is Britain's secret shame. No one knows the exact scale of the problem, but a report from Help the Aged last year claimed that 500,000 elderly people in the UK were suffering some form of physical, emotional, sexual or financial abuse.

The nature of the abuse varies widely. At one extreme there are cases of physical violence: old people, many suffering from degenerative diseases, are punched, kicked, sexually assaulted or shaken violently, leading in the worst cases to their death. It seems unbelievable that it goes on and can go unnoticed by others, often unreported and unpunished.

The Government knows that the care system has to be changed and is preparing to launch a consultation with a view to reforming the nature, quality and funding of care for the elderly.

It is too late to save Peter Giles. But Ken and Sue hope that the sentence meted out to Kathleen Vitturini will send a warning shot across the industry.

"We can't bring Peter back," he says. "But we hope that the jail sentence will help to prevent others dying at the hands of the very people who are supposed to look after them."

Abridged
SOURCE: TelegraphUK

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