MP Rosena Allin-Khan calls for more CCTV in care homes after finding father ‘bleeding’

Rosena Allin-Khan said she found her elderly father covered in blood and bruises at a care home
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An MP today called for more CCTV in care homes after telling how she found her elderly father mysteriously covered in blood and bruises.

Rosena Allin-Khan told fellow MPs how she pleaded in vain for an explanation for her father’s catalogue of injuries sustained at a council-funded home for elderly people.

Describing how her father, who has dementia and can no longer talk, could not tell her what happened, she said a Wandsworth council official told her “he had asked for it”.

Now Dr Allin-Khan is calling for video equipment to be more widely used to protect vulnerable people who do not have the ability to tell their families or the police if somebody is hurting them.

“Vulnerable people in care facilities rightly need their privacy, but we could most definitely increase CCTV in black spot areas,” she told the Standard. “One of the most difficult parts of an investigation is finding evidence, and without evidence abusers go undiscovered and unpunished.”

Tooting MP Dr Allin-Khan said her family’s nightmare began with “a hushed phone call” from a whistleblower urging her to check urgently on her father, a former university lecturer aged 76.

“Nothing prepares you for arriving to find your loved one with black eyes, bruises, cuts and blood on their face,” she told the Commons.

Despite the family getting no official alert, she discovered the injuries were already three days old.

Dr Allin-Khan, who is an A&E doctor, expressed surprise that an ambulance had not been called to a senior citizen on blood thinners with a head injury. She said there would have been “a great deal of blood loss” from the “brutal injuries”. Staff said he had not fallen nor been outside the home, Ensham House, but had no explanation.

After complaining to Wandsworth council, she said she was warned by relatives of other residents “that staff had boasted that they were trying to get dad out because we were asking too many questions”.

On another occasion, the family discovered “bruises all over his body” when undressing him.

She noticed that her father was choosing to sleep in a communal area where there were CCTV cameras and other people around, rather than in his room.

“The final nail in the coffin, and the point of no return, was when we found my father unconscious on the floor, with blood on the walls and the floor, and a carer’s set of keys left next to him,” she told MPs. “Following this, he spent one month in hospital.”

Dr Allin-Khan said her father was now settled in another facility with no problems.

Wandsworth Council said it gives “the highest priority to safeguarding vulnerable adults and children”.

It went on: “We have been in dialogue with Rosena Allin-Khan MP about her father for some time, and are aware of her concerns. Although she makes some important points related to wider public policy, in the investigations to date we have not been able to validate her specific complaint about her father’s care.”

A spokesperson for London Care, which runs the home, said “no evidence could be found” of failings in its duty of care and stressed that safety was “our top priority”.

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