Secret footage reveals abuse of woman with dementia at luxury UK care home

An 88-year-old woman with dementia was physically and mentally abused at a luxury care home charging residents close to £100,000 a year, the Guardian can reveal.

Staff misconduct was exposed by secret filming inside the home run by Signature Senior Lifestyle, which operates 36 luxury facilities mostly in the south of England.

It has admitted that Ann King was mistreated at Reigate Grange in Surrey earlier this year.

Distressing footage from a covert camera inside her room shows:

•  Care staff handling King roughly, causing her to cry out in distress. On one occasion she was left on the floor for 50 minutes.
•  King being taunted, mocked and sworn at when she was confused and frightened.
•  The retired nurse being assaulted by a cleaner, who hits her with a rag used to clean a toilet while she is lying in bed.
•  The cleaner threatening to empty a bin on the pensioner’s head and making indecent sexual gestures in her face.

The abuse was exposed by King’s children, Richard Last and Clare Miller. They became so concerned about her wellbeing at the care home, where she lived from January 2021 to March 2022, that they installed a hidden camera on her bedside table.

They have shared the footage because they fear what happened to their mother may not be an isolated incident, and because: “She has always been horrified by this type of thing and we felt she would have wanted us to show this is going on.”

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Source: The Guardian, 13 October 2022