Nursing Home Negligence

A nurse is to go on trial after an 87-year-old woman with dementia living at a West Yorkshire care home suffered critical burns.

Grandmother and former cricket club stewardess Violet Smith, from Heckmondwike, suffered the injuries in January this year. She was living at the Carlinghow Nursing Home in Batley, a specialist care home for elderly people with dementia run by Charlton Care Ltd of Edgware, Middlesex.

Violet, an Alzheimer's sufferer, received four per cent burns and as a result of her injuries had to receive significant skin grafts at Pinderfields hospital, Wakefield. She died two months later following a chest infection.

Andrea Jarrett-Garrick, who worked at the nursing home, is to face criminal charges of unlawful wounding and grievous bodily harm, wilful neglect and the ill treating of a patient following the incident. Her trial is scheduled to last six days and will begin on Monday 8th December at Leeds Crown Court.

The family's solicitor, clinical negligence specialist Rachelle Mahapatra, from the Leeds office of national law firm Irwin Mitchell said: "The Smiths are extremely concerned as to how a frail, vulnerable old lady came to suffer such horrific injuries while living at a well respected care home."

Violet's son, Rodney Smith said: "Seeing my mother in such pain was such a traumatic and distressing experience for us all, made all the worse due to the fact no one could explain to her what had happened.

"We hope that this trial will finally give us answers as to what happened to her and that justice will be done in the hope of saving others from the same fate."