ONE Of the directors of a Dublin nursing home where it is alleged residents were beaten, kicked and abused has claimed the allegations are “completely unfounded”.
The Health Service Executive has taken charge of Rostrevor nursing home in Rathgar following a court application this week by the Health Information and Quality Authority, the health watchdog.
The authority said it had been provided with details of a number of incidents of alleged abuse against five residents of the private nursing home. The allegations, against a male care assistant, were made by three staff during inspections of the facility last month.
Sarah Lipsett, a director of the home, said yesterday that the three staff who made the allegations to the authority never reported them to any nurse or manager at the home, contrary to what was claimed in an affidavit furnished by the authority to the District Court last Friday.
She told The Irish Times yesterday the three staff – who had been kept on at the home on the orders of the authority – included a catering department employee and two care assistants. All three were from the Philippines.
She said one of them had been reported to management by the male care assistant, who is from India. He has been suspended pending an investigation. He had worked at the home for four years.
The first she heard of the allegations, Ms Lipsett said, was after an inspection by the authority at the home on May 26th. “I was extremely shocked and I asked all the residents and their relatives about this man. There wasn’t one complaint about him.”
In relation to specific allegations made about the suspended care assistant’s abuse of five residents, including that he banged the head of an elderly man off a door jamb and insisted on taking one elderly woman to the bathroom on his own from where she could be heard screaming, she said all five of these residents were cognitively impaired but their doctors, nurses or other staff, in addition to relatives, had not seen anything.
“We believe that is because it didn’t happen.”
She said the elderly woman had dementia and was always screaming and her doctor this week found no signs of abuse. The elderly man with bruising was very aggressive and needed to be restrained.
She stressed that contrary to a claim in the authority’s affidavit that the three whistleblowers had working visas which tied them to Rostrevor, this was not the case.
“They are free to work anywhere they want,” she said.
Ms Lipsett, a solicitor who has been involved for the past few months in the running of the home owned by her mother Therese Lipsett, said she knew nothing about the interim court order obtained by the authority until last Friday at 5pm, when the HSE arrived to take charge of the home on foot of the court order.
The HSE has said it will find alternative placements for the home’s 23 residents but Ms Lipsett said none of them had been moved out yet.
“And none of the residents wants to move. They are all terribly upset,” she said.
Half the residents were cognitively impaired, the other half were fully compos mentis, she said. The authority in its affidavit claimed all appeared cognitively impaired to some degree.
Among the residents, she said, were a retired doctor, a retired priest and a former company director whose relatives were very happy with their care.
It was very inconsiderate, she added, that the wishes of resident were not considered in the interim court order.
Furthermore Ms Lipsett criticised the manner in which families of residents were informed last Friday at 9pm by the HSE that their relatives would be moved out of the home to an unknown alternative location within 28 days.
“It was really handled badly . . . they were phoned at 9pm on the Friday of a bank holiday weekend. It was absolute chaos, families were calling me, they were in complete distress, they had planned to go away, they didn’t know what to do.”
Questioned about the authority’s claims that there was a high level of falls in the home, Ms Lipsett said there was only one fracture in two years and levels of falls were similar to those other nursing homes.
She also rejected the authority’s claims that her mother Therese Lipsett had continued to be involved in the running of the home even though she was struck off the nurses’ register in December.
This was for professional misconduct over her failure to respond or take appropriate action when allegations were made that a male nurse engaged in inappropriate physical and/or sexual contact with a resident in 2005.
She said her mother had been back in the home only twice, once for a staff meeting to announce her resignation in April and once to meet one of the relatives in May.
Ms Lipsett said her mother should have reported the alleged abuse in 2005 to the authorities but it was her first time dealing with such a case.
She did, however, speak to the elderly woman about the allegations and she claimed nothing had happened to her. This woman was still in the home and very upset at the thought of leaving, she added.
Ms Lipsett said that the alleged abuse in 2005 was only reported to An Bord Altranais three years later by a care assistant after the assistant had left the home.