Power Lunch

Call for inquiry into how care home killer got drugs

0 Comments | Western Morning News, The, Jul 24, 2010 | by WMN REPORTER

Health chiefs are launching an inquiry into how a drug-addicted care home manager was able to steal prescription drugs from the elderly people she nursed. Rachel Baker, 44, gave Lucy Cox, 97, lethal doses of medication while she herself was addicted to the opiate painkillers she stole from pensioners in her care at Parkfields Residential Care Home in Butleigh, near Glastonbury.

She was convicted of the manslaughter of Mrs Cox earlier this year, but acquitted by a jury at Bristol Crown Court of the manslaughter of another resident, Frances Hay, 85. Both women died in November 2006.

Baker was sentenced to ten years in prison in May, but her imprisonment does not go far enough for those who claim a number of other residents who died at the home were also killed.

While some families have welcomed the NHS review, they say it is not enough, and their calls for an independent inquiry have now been backed by Wells MP Tessa Munt.

The daughter of 79-year-old Marion Alder, a resident at Parkfields, is among those to have met with Ms Munt.

Claire Forsey, 49, said her mother had been denied the drugs she was prescribed to treat her severe anxiety disorder because Baker was taking them.

“She took their drugs and left them, in my mother’s case, making her so anxious that it was just tortuous,” Ms Forsey told the BBC.

“For the last six months of her life she was like a frightened rabbit caught in headlights and bewildered by what was going on.”

The former carer at the home who blew the whistle on the scandal, Sarah Barnett, said she is delighted Ms Munt has offered to help in pushing for an independent public inquiry.

Mrs Barnett, 40, said: “Independent scrutiny is obviously safer and having more public awareness into governing bodies, or the situation, is a safer process and ensures more accountability.”

However, she called for the inquiry to also examine the role of other agencies, such as the care home inspectors.

Ms Munt said she wanted to work with the families to “make sure that we sort out some of the issues that we have identified so that we can make things better for everybody else”.

Baker had been addicted to the very painkilling drugs she was supposed to be giving to her residents. During her trial, it emerged she fabricated terminal conditions and exaggerated symptoms of her residents in order to feed her habit.

At one stage, police were investigating up to 12 suspicious deaths in an inquiry which saw them exhume the bodies of former Parkfields residents Nellie Pickford, Marion Alder and Fred Green.

But the bodies had been in the ground so long, there was no clear evidence of how they died, so Baker faced no further charges.

The NHS Somerset review will aim to identify any lessons that could be learnt from Baker’s case.

It will investigate how Dr Richard Hughes, who was the main GP for both Rachel Baker and her residents, controversially prescribed powerful painkillers on her say-so alone.

The review will also look into why Dr Hughes continued to give Baker drugs for her residents for several months after colleagues blew the whistle on her addiction.

NHS Somerset has pointed out the judge did not criticise any GPs in his summing-up at Baker’s trial.

Police exhuming the bodies of suspected victims from the Glastonbury graveyard