The police have confirmed we are entitled to share our story about Mona Cliffe Care Home, Littleborough and the main abuser Lesley Hainsworth. I will warn you, this may make you cry. No one living with dementia, or vulnerable in anyway, should have to go through this.
Please help us with our call to action and share this story far and WIDE. Thank you.
You can help by signing the petition, here: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/258498/sponsors/new?token=OktxwPDveFuoiJguB1QP
“Help me! Help! Help! Help! Help! Help!” he cried over and over again, shouting to try and raise the alarm. “Shut up you idiot! Shut up!” was the only response he got as he was roughly assaulted, and pressure placed on the existing sore.
“Get your legs in bed! Get your legs in bed! If you don’t, I’ll take you downstairs and leave you alone in a dark room. Now get your legs in bed!” The woman eventually storms out the room shouting “Oh bog off” leaving him sat alone in the dark.
Alone in the dark, he calls out for help “Freda, Fredaaaaaa!” No response. The man takes off his wet underwear, grabs a towel and attempts to clean himself. Eventually someone arrives “Get your legs back in bed!” The man listens and gets his legs back into his wet bed.
A few moments later he is in such discomfort he gets back out of bed. Another person enters the room and asks if he wants to get up. “Let’s get this wet t-shirt off you” she says, and carefully puts a clean one on. No washing or bathing involved. The woman asks what happened when he was on the carpet and hurt his back. He responds,” She pushed me”. The woman says, “no one here would you push you”. He responds, “You weren’t here when it happened”. As she gets him ready to take him downstairs for breakfast, he says he needs the toilet, the woman tells him to urinate where he is “you won’t leak, you have a pad on”.
Its 7pm, the man is weary, he is distressed, he is cold and can’t get warm, sat alone in a room with no heating as the snow falls outside. He has no drink, no means to call for help, and he cries when his granddaughter walks in “I need to go to hospital”. His granddaughter touches his hot face, his head hangs low, he brings his cold hands and little blanket up to his chin trying to get warm. He shivers. His granddaughter asks if he needs a drink? “Yes please”. She seeks out help and a drink and asks for the GP to be called, she is worried her Grandfather may be displaying signs of wound infection. The carer expresses concerns that the man may have had a TIA. She refuses to turn the heating on, saying “I don’t do heating”.
That night the GP arrives at 10pm. He enters the bedroom of the man, with the same woman who shouted at him the previous night. She suggests that the GP was only called to appease family and they have no concerns. The GP checks temperature and pulse and leaves. He doesn’t check the red raw sore covering half of the mans back because the woman tells him its already been checked.
The man wakes, mutters his bed is wet through and begins calling for support. Forty minutes later the woman arrives. Does she slap him? We’re not quite sure. Her arm is just off the edge of the video footage. The man says he doesn’t want her there. “You can lay in pee for all I care” is the response. She instructs him to move, her colleague suggests using the proper equipment, the woman threatens the man “I’ll get the hoist, shall I?” Eventually he is able to make his unresponsive body, do as he is being asked. “It’s hurting me” he says. “You will hurt!” She responds, “I’m not pissing about anymore, everyone’s too andy pandy with you. Ridiculous!” and she instructs the other woman to ensure the head of his bed is put down “he’s not getting up again!” and they leave him alone in the dark, restrained, once more.
One hour later he begins to try and get up, but it is a huge struggle because of the position the bed is now in. The restraint of the bed however is not enough to stop him and eventually he manages to sit up. This time the alarm does not sound. He calls for help, but again, there is no response. He uses all of his energy to muster up the courage and coordination to stand, and he stumbles to his door, again calling for help. No response. He falls into his chair, and then sees his commode. He tries to get to his bed, nearly cracking his head against the wall as he crash-lands backwards onto his mattress. Recovering he leans towards the commode, but he cannot open it. Eventually he gives up. He attempts to get himself dressed, spending 20 minutes trying to get his socks on, both socks end up on the same foot.
After 40 minutes a woman eventually enters the room. “What are you doing?”, “Drying myself” he says wiping his body with the bed sheet. The woman who told him to ‘bog off’ the night before enters and tells him to stand up “You can when you want to!” After several attempts to stand she shouts, “You’re going in that hoist, we’re not messing about!”
Confused the man says, “Take your glasses off”, “No I won’t take my glasses off, you’re not bossing me around! I’m telling you!” The man tells her to get off “No, I won’t get off” she shouts, as he cries out in pain. He shouts “get off me” again and is ignored as she roughly pulls a hoist across the bottom half of his back that is still weeping from the huge sore he has. He cries out again “Give me a minute?”. “No, you won’t do anything we tell you so you’re going in the hoist!”
The hoist is carelessly and roughly attached. Nothing is placed around his legs to aid his standing and take pressure away from the sore on his back. He cries out in pain over and over again. “Shut up you idiot, shut up!” he begins crying for help. “Help me! Help! Help! Help! Help! Help!” he cried over and over again, shouting to try and raise the alarm. “Shut up you idiot! Shut up!” was the only response he got as he was roughly assaulted, and pressure placed on the existing sore.
Now she pulls and pushes him using the hoist strap wrapped around his painful sore back that is still a large open wound, a category two pressure sore. She grabs his wrists forcefully and her colleague grabs his legs with no warning, and they swing him around on to the bed. He calls out in pain again. “Shut up idiot!” is the only response. He gives up crying for help, resided by the fact that no one will come. They turn the light off and leave the room in silence. Again, he is left alone.
He gets up right away. The woman comes back “We’re fed up of you. Everybody here is fed up of you! Get in bed! You’re waking everybody up. GET IN BED!” She leaves and the other woman returns. He gets his legs back in bed, she pulls the cover half over his body and he says, “thank you”. She leaves. “They don’t realise what they are doing” he says to an empty room.
Much later he is in so much discomfort he calls out in pain. He calls for help, calls for his wife. After 40 minutes someone comes and says she will be back. Another 15 minutes and they return. “Is he asleep, friggin’ leave him!” then immediately pulls all of his bed covers away from his body. He lays there unable to move half sat up, half lay down skewered across the bed with nothing, not even underwear on the lower half of his body. It is dark outside. She turns the tap on “Oh its bloody cold! How are we meant to clean them with cold water” and then proceeds to roughly scrub the man a with the freezing cold flannel. He cries out in shock and discomfort. He is lay on the sore part of his back, his calves hanging over the edge of the bed, his head lifted off the mattress, but he can’t get up. He cries out in pain “Oh shut up! You’re having a wash, because you stink! Because you peed everywhere”. “I didn’t” he proclaims. “Yes, you did!” She proceeds to wash him with the unrinsed and cold flannel, on his face.
She raises the bed and continues to move him. He calls out in pain, he is in so much discomfort. He cries “you’ve got to get off” almost as if using his last ounce of effort. “No, I won’t get off!”. She surprises him with cold deodorant sprayed near his under arm and he calls out in shock. “Are you a man or a mouse?” she laughs at him, the colleague laughs at him too, and they both laugh at him together while he sits undressed in front of two strangers he doesn’t know with no dignity or energy left in him. “I think the more you andy pandy with him…You’ve just got to get it done, haven’t you?” The colleague agrees. “It’s freezing downstairs” she says as they get him into his wheelchair and shout at him to “SIT” he calls out in pain again and again.
This was my Grandad. A few days earlier he had been happy at my Nana’s 80th birthday out with all of the family. He got so upset when we had to take him back to the care home, he had been living in for less than two weeks. We as a family had tried to take care of him at home, but his mobility and large physique meant that we couldn’t physically do it. All those years playing rugby for Littleborough had given him some huge muscles!
My Grandad went in to Mona Cliffe on Monday 14th January 2019. He was walking, talking and happy in himself. Within a week they said he couldn’t walk, and they wouldn’t allow family to use his walking frame with him. We were concerned and so asked another care home to come out and assess him. Due to the snow, they couldn’t do this for another week. When they came out, they discovered a huge pressure sore across half of his back. They immediately reported it to adult safeguarding and requested a GP come to see him right away. The following day when family asked, the GP still had not been contacted. Family did it on his behalf.
One staff member said he did it to himself, apparently, he threw himself down on the floor in the lounge and shimmied across the floor and caused a carpet burn on his back. Another said he fell off his bed and did it on the floor shimmying across the floor in his room, laughing with his trousers down. The doctor said it was a pressure sore. You can see the sores in the images below. How had this gone unnoticed?
Our concerns with the home led me to purchase a hidden camera. We had the hidden camera up for less than 48 hours before removing him from the home and taking him to hospital as we had nowhere else to go. The hospital staff were horrified at the bruising and pressure sore my Grandad had. My Grandad told the nurse he had been hit by the staff there. He was severely dehydrated.
My Grandad died three weeks later. His death certificate stated he died of Sepsis (Blood infection), caused by a severe urine infection. Secondary cause of death was Acute Kidney Injury.
My Grandad was a great man. He was on the committee for Littleborough Cricket Club for many years. He used to call the Bingo on a Friday night there when I was younger too. My Grandad was a kind, caring, loving Grandad. He was always singing and smiling; he was a very special man. He was so polite, a gentle giant. He isn’t here anymore, and we as a family blame Mona Cliffe for that. The majority of the staff there were absolutely awful, although there were a couple of nice people working there too.
The main abuser of my Grandad was Lesley Hainsworth, the woman in the photo below. She was suspended from work and interviewed by police. The police took several agonising weeks to determine if they could prosecute her for her actions caught on camera. Eventually they decided that the evidence we had provided on the video (all of which is written above) was not enough to reach their threshold for prosecution. So now this woman is back working at Mona Cliffe with vulnerable adults. Please do check your loved ones are safe. We do not want this to happen to anyone else. We were informed not to speak publicly about this until after the investigation came to completion. Otherwise we would have done it sooner.
Three months after our first request, and we are still waiting on Dr Sharma the owner of Mona Cliffe to provide us with my Grandfather’s records.
What is our call to action?
1) The Police prosecution threshold should not be so high. The abuse my Grandad received falls under four abuse categories as part of the law provided by The Care Act. Institutional Abuse, Psychological Abuse, Physical Abuse, and Neglect. There are more than 25 separate types of abuse reported on my Grandad under the four categories. The Police threshold needs to be lowered.
2) All care homes should have a booklet provided to families about the minimum expected requirements and who to contact if you are concerned, they are not being met.
3) Audio recording technology in all care homes to prevent vulnerable people being treated so cruelly.
4) The CQC should be updating their reports when serious complaints like this are submitted. Apparently, there was a similar serious complaint about Mona Cliffe 12 months ago. If we had known this, we would have not placed my Grandfather in their care.
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