Auckland rest home back under fire over elderly abuse

  • 18/06/2018

The daughter of the elderly man who died in a rest home after being left with maggots in his feet is still fighting for justice.

In March, RadioLIVE's Mark Sainsbury received a call from a woman called Corina, who shared her appalling story of alleged elderly abuse at Palms Lifecare.

She said she and her brother witnessed countless examples of neglect, including faeces scattered throughout her father's room, blood in his eye, maggots in his feet, and a refusal to provide any pain relief medication stronger than paracetamol.

She returned to the show on Monday, in the hope her story would prevent a similar situation from every occurring again.

"If a farmer did that to an animal, if someone looked onto a farmer's property and there was a sheep covered in faeces and needed dagging and shearing and it had wounds that hadn't been treated and it had maggots on it, what do you think would happen to that farmer?" she asked Sainsbury.

"The animal would be removed, the farmer would be prosecuted. And in my father's instance, what's different? Nothing."

In March, the rest home's CO David Renwick told Newshub the allegations are a "huge concern".

"Obviously anything remotely like that, we don't like," he says.

Mr Renwick said an independent inspector or clinical nurse from the local District Health Board would be investigating the claims.

However the DHB's report was even worse than Corina could have ever expected.

"The report was horrific on the lack of treatment and the lack of care, the lack of minimum standards being met for him," she says.

"From the day he entered that place until the day he left, it was just a nightmare for him. He was just enveloped in pain and suffering."

Since then, she says the rest home has tried to control what she says to the media, and has been withholding information from her. But she's fighting back so what happened to her father doesn't happen again.

"I don't want this to happen in other places - and you know what? It is. People are really like ostriches with their heads in the sand if they don't believe or really think it happens," she told RadioLIVE.

"It started with health care assistants and went to senior management. Shift after shift. Everyone played a part in my father's suffering. Everyone."

"There was not one shift. Nobody spoke up. Nobody said 'hey this isn't right'. For whatever reason, in the culture in that place, it was allowed to continue. Day after day. Shift after shift."

She says if someone else believes someone in a rest home is being mistreated, they need to go to their DHB.

"Don't be scared to speak up, you won't be wrong. Trust your gut and don't wait because your loved one doesn't have that time," she says.

"Speak up and keep speaking until someone listens."

RadioLIVE and Newshub have contacted Palms Lifecare for comment.

Newshub.