Families want police inquiry over care home injuries

THE families of two severely disabled men who suffered broken legs at a scandal-hit care home firm have called for police to reopen their case.

Sussex Health Care is being investigated over 12 deaths at nine of its homes for the elderly and disabled. Earlier this month, the Daily Mail revealed that the deaths of three disabled young men in their 20s and two women – Christine Sonko, 54, and Valerie Tilley, 79 – were among those under investigation.

Now relatives are urging police to examine injuries to severely disabled Gary Lewis, 65, and Matthew Bates, 33, as part of the major crime team invesitgation. Both suffered broken thigh bones within three days of each other at the firm’s Beech Lodge home in 2015.

Their families told Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday that both men were taken to hospital on the same day before a doctor triggered a safeguarding alert. But charges were never brought after an initial police investigation.

Mr Bates’s family say the cerebral palsy sufferer was left with a broken leg for at least 15 hours before paramedics were called to the home in Horsham.

He was then in hospital for 100 days, but his family say they still do not know when he was injured or exactly how. His father Mark, 64, an antiques dealer, said last night: ‘I can only imagine it would have been horrendous for him. The care that night was abysmal. Something had gone desperately wrong in that care home.’

Mr Lewis, who has severe mental disabilities and cannot walk or talk, broke his left femur. Martyn Lewis said the injury had nearly killed his brother. ‘That this can happen twice in such a short space of time seems to indicate there is something systemically wrong with the care being offered,’ he said.

Doctors told the BBC ‘rough’ or ‘poor’ hoisting could explain the injuries.

A Sussex Health Care spokesman said Beech Lodge ‘supports people with complex needs, including physical conditions such as osteoporosis, which can make bones very brittle’.

He added: ‘Both cases were subject to comprehensive safeguarding investigations at the time, involving the county and the police. We co-operated fully with those investigations, which found no evidence of poor handling or any other wrongdoing.’

Sussex Police said: ‘Following a full investigation no criminal charges were brought in relation to their case’. West Sussex County Council said a ‘safeguarding adult review’ into the two men’s cases is being carried out.

‘It would have been horrendous’