Sheffield daughter's anger at care of her elderly parents

A Sheffield woman is angry that a home-care provider has kept its council contract despite what she claims is negligence in the care of her parents.
Sheffield Town HallSheffield Town Hall
Sheffield Town Hall

Alicia Boden, of Heeley, said her parents Peter and Marisa Boden were not looked after properly by Inspire UK carers.

Ms Boden, 51, said Sheffield Council recommended the care company in January, despite a report by the Care Quality Commission in October 2017 saying Inspire UK required improvement in numerous areas, including safety.

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She said: 'Sheffield Council have a duty of care to the elderly and I don't think they have abided by this. I think Inspire UK were given the contract by the council because they are cheap.'

Ms Boden is currently in the complaints process with the council, in order to start an investigation into why her parents were treated so badly by the Sheffield-based company.

'The council have known about my parents' case since January and have done nothing about removing Inspire UK,' she said.

Sheffield Council recommended Inspire UK to Ms Boden for the care of her father who suffered from heart failure and her mother who suffers from dementia.

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Ms Boden became so concerned with the standard of care given to her parents that she cancelled the carers after only one month.

She claims that carers maintained a poor standard of hygiene for her father, who couldn't walk.

She said they also didn't dress him properly, left full bottles of urine lying around, didn't clean up excrement in the bathroom and failed to notice large red thrush marks on his groin area.

She was particularly alarmed that carers provided her father with incorrect doses of the drug, Warfarin.

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She said: 'When I found out, I was just in shock and disbelief.

'They also did not administer tablets to reduce the water in my Dad's body due to heart failure when they should have been increased.'

Ms Boden's claims are backed up by notes from a council safeguarding meeting in July 2018 and also from the CQC report published in October 2017.

This report states that Inspire UK is '˜requiring improvement' in a number of areas including: safety, effectiveness, responsiveness and leadership.

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Ms Boden believes that the council should never have given the contract to Inspire UK in light of the reports' findings.

She said: 'I think the council are trying to brush this under the carpet and hope that I will give up.

'I think they are irresponsible and they are not taking this seriously enough.'

Sheffield Heeley MP, Louise Haigh, said that this is not an unusual case of social care negligence.

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She said: 'I think, tragically, it is symptomatic of a whole host of issues that are prevalent across the social care system.

'It fails to provide a basic, decent level of service to either the people who receive that service or the people who work in it.

'In this case, the quality of care that Mr Boden received, the shoddy way that Alicia has been treated in the months after his death, are just not uncommon.'

Phil Holmes, director of adult services at Sheffield Council said: 'We are taking this issue very seriously and investigating in depth.

'We plan to respond to Ms Boden when this is complete.'

Inspire Care declined to comment.