A LABOUR MP has told Parliament how her elderly dementia-hit father was left bloodied and bruised at a care facility, and she received no explanation for how he got these injuries.
Rosena Allin-Khan, in a parliamentary adjournment debate she secured on Wednesday (27) into the safeguarding of vulnerable people in care homes, said a senior council official told her that her father had "asked for it."
Allin-Khan told the Commons it took three days before a carer alerted her about her father’s injuries. “He was found extremely distressed by a carer, covered in bloody injuries,” she said.
“To our horror, we were told he had not left the building overnight, there was no evidence of him having fallen and no other resident had any evidence of injury. Quite unexpectedly, the centre manager suddenly left and not a single person had any excuse as to what had happened or why we were not called.
“In the following months, we found my father bruised again with no answers on two further occasions … we were incredibly concerned, and this is when they started to attempt to claim, that despite a year of living there with no issues towards him, my father was being ‘difficult’.
“This was not corroborated by his community psychiatric team, [nor] any of the day centre staff where he spent up to 25 hours per week.”
The MP also claimed that the director of adult social services at Wandsworth council, Liz Bruce, refused to look at photos of her father’s injuries and said he suffered the injuries because he “had asked for it.”
Allin-Khan’s father, a former university lecturer who can no longer speak properly, was living at Ensham House in Wandsworth, south London for 18 months until late last year.
He has since been moved to another care facility.
A Wandsworth council spokesman told the Guardian that they have “not been able to validate her specific complaint about her father’s care.”
A council spokesman added: “Liz Bruce is one of the most experienced directors of adult social services in the country and has been a director for more than ten years.
"She cares very much for vulnerable adults and leads a department which demands high standards when it comes to safeguarding arrangements, taking our safeguarding duties very seriously.
“She has personally been involved in this case in which she has deep empathy, working closely with the MP and her family. The council has strong confidence in the professionalism of her and her staff.”
The Metropolitan police investigated the injuries sustained by the Allin-Khan’s father, but said it was not possible to confirm if he had been assaulted.
