Troubling record of the care chain where 12 died
Failures and abuse go back a decade’ Council will help residents to leave
THE troubling history of a scandal-hit chain of care homes where 12 people have died can be revealed today.
Sussex Health Care is under police investigation over the deaths, which include disabled men in their 20s.
A major crime team is looking into incidents dating back two years at nine of the firm’s homes, in one of the biggest investigations Sussex Police has undertaken.
Detectives arrested a woman on suspicion of neglect and fraud last Thursday before releasing her under investigation.
West Sussex County Council has stopped sending residents to the company – and two weeks ago started withdrawing disabled young adults from one home over ‘clinical care and safety’ concerns. It has also offered to move anyone who wants to be placed elsewhere, even if they had privately funded their care. Inspection reports and coroners’ records reveal allegations of dangerous care, appalling treatment and abuse stretch back nearly a decade. Safeguarding concerns involve 43 residents, including patients not given enough to drink, problems with feeding tubes, poor hygiene and bad management of pressure sores. Understaffing at the homes, poor management of medicines, and the way residents are handled and moved are also under investigation.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) last night said it was concerned about ‘the ability’ of Sussex Health Care to provide reliable care, adding that the company allowed problems to escalate until they were pointed out by inspectors.
Campaigners said the company’s past problems may not have been apparent to families after the firm re-registered with the CQC three years ago under a different name. MPs and campaigners have called for a full investigation. The Mail can reveal: The 12 deaths under investigation include two women – Christine Sonko, 54 and Valerie Tilley, 79 – who both died of head injuries. Mrs Tilley’s son Adrian said: ‘The public have the right to know’;
Police are also looking into the deaths of three severely disabled young men in their 20s;
The investigation includes the deaths of seven other people between April 2015 and June 2017, who remain unidentified;
A severely disabled 56-year- old man was left to die with pneumonia in 2008, which the coroner said had involved a ‘gross failure of basic nursing care’;
A carer was found at 1am engaging in sexual activity with a severely disabled woman.
Sussex Health Care charges up to £100,000 a year for a place in its homes, which offer nursing care for elderly people, young adults with learning difficulties, and people with severe neurological disabilities. The firm is owned by joint chairmen Shiraz Boghani and Shafik Sachedina.
Andrea Sutcliffe, the CQC’s chief inspector of adult social care, said the company was the subject of ‘continuous review’, adding: ‘On numerous occasions we identified breaches of the regulations and have taken enforcement action including warning notices and requirement actions to drive improvement in these services.
‘Overall we are concerned about the ability of Sussex Health Care to provide a reliable quality of care for people. While we have seen some examples of good practice, it is clear that this is not shared across all their services.’
The care of many residents is funded by the council, which is understood to have paid the firm millions of pounds over its 30-year history. But questions have also been raised about the close links between the local authority and the firm, after it emerged Peter Catchpole, who serves as policy adviser on the Sussex Health Care board, was also cabinet member for adult social care at West Sussex County Council.
Lib Dem former care minister Norman Lamb said: ‘This is a deeply disturbing catalogue of failures, and I will be writing to the Health Secretary urging him to investigate why a number of warnings appear not to have been acted on. We owe it to loved ones, who have been left bereaved, to establish whether earlier, robust safeguarding action might have saved lives.’
Five years ago the CQC, the police, and social services were all warned by a coroner of a case of ‘gross failure of basic nursing’ at
‘The public have a right to know’
one home, after staff failed to notice brain-damaged Christopher Allen had developed pneumonia before he died in 2008.
Mid Sussex MP Sir Nicholas Soames said: ‘It certainly looks to me as though the warning signals to the council were not acted on as quickly as they should have been.’
It is understood 17 police officers are working on the case. An officer told one family member it ‘could change the way a lot of agencies go about their business’. The nine homes, most of them in the Horsham and Crawley area, are Orchard Lodge, Longfield Manor, The Lau- rels, Kingsmead Lodge, Beech Lodge, Beechcroft Care Centre, Rapkyns Care Centre, Rapkyns Nursing Home and Woodhurst Lodge.
The CQC has inspected the nine homes 55 times since 2010, but only reports published since November 2014 are on the company’s profile page on the CQC website, because Sussex Care Homes at that point re-registered under a new off-shore company.
Eileen Chubb, founder of campaign group Compassion in Care, said: ‘Why is the system justifying and excusing poor care? It is not just the failing of the care homes it is the failing of the whole system that is there to protect people when things go wrong.’
A council spokesman said: ‘Where appropriate we are offering [council-funded] residents the opportunity to move if they wish to do so and we have advised other funding authorities of this approach.
‘We are also offering to assess and help self-funders who may wish to move. We are currently not placing people at the homes involved.’ Sussex Police said: ‘The investigation remains ongoing and aims to identify whether any criminal offences have been committed, or not.’
It is understood Sussex Health Care believe the council’s decision to withdraw residents from its Orchard Lodge site was unwarranted and ‘unlawful’. A spokesman added: ‘As an organisation that has prided itself on providing the highest standards of care for over 30 years, to over 30,000 people, we are deeply shocked by the allegations that have been made by the Daily Mail and rigorously dispute them.’