A DYING pensioner was not ‘treated as a person’ by care home and social services staff, the first probe of its kind in Solihull has found.The investigation made recommendations about how OAPs are cared for following the death of ‘Dorothy’ in 2009, aged 96.
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She moved into a home in 2004, paying her own costs, but her deteriorating physical and mental state put a strain on staff, it found. She moved to another home and died two days later.
The report finds: “It does…feel that most of the professionals involved with Dorothy
stopped seeing her as a person who was in the last weeks/days of her life and this was certainly her son’s judgement.”
There ‘does not seem to have been any consideration’ of getting her specialist nursing care, it said, which gave ‘a better chance that Dorothy would have had a dignified death’.
It said: “If anything the care home tried for too long to maintain her in the residential environment and professional decision making was overshadowed by being too kind and obliging.”
It said it is ‘very sad’ that ‘she did not die where she would have wanted to die’. Her real name was kept confidential.
It said: “She, her family and staff at the care home experienced some distressing and preventable events as her life came to an end.”
During her stay the un-named home, in Solihull town, dropped from two stars to none after an inspection by the Care Quality Commission, the national regulator.
It is the first ‘serious care review’ to be conducted in the borough. It found her death was ‘not preventable’.
The review, which cost £12,000, makes 12 recommendations around procedures and training.
Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council, responsible for social services, said the issues raised ‘did not and would not have identified’ by the authority had the SCR not taken place.
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