A WOMAN whose father was left with a head injury while being cared for in a mental health centre has successfully sued the NHS, but said it is not enough.

Tracy Betteridge, 43, last month won more than £3,600 in compensation after suing the Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust.

She said: “I’m not happy at all. I wanted people, like managers, to be made responsible for it and to my mind that hasn’t happened.”

The case centred on her father Ivor, 76, who was being treated for severe dementia at the Fiennes Centre in Hightown Road, Banbury, after his wife and carer, Georgina, died aged 71 from breast cancer in 2012.

In February 2013, he was left with a head injury after a male health care assistant used a physical restraint, aiming to calm him down while nurses tried to wash him.

The agency health care assistant, who has not been named, has since been suspended from working at the trust.

Miss Betteridge said people needed to stand up for dementia sufferers.

She said: “If they didn’t have somebody like me who stands their ground, nobody would be any the wiser. My father would be just another statistic that falls off the face of the planet.”

A report of the trust’s investigation, published in May 2013, said it was not clear how Mr Betteridge fell, with one nurse saying she saw the assistant push him and another saying Mr Betteridge, who died in March 2014, simply stumbled after the assistant let him go.

Mr Betteridge, of Lower Brailes near Banbury, was known to sometimes be violent and had a total of 10 violence incidents on his record towards staff and other patients at the Fiennes Centre. The report said: “There was no care plan to manage his violence.”

It criticised the fact there were not enough staff on the ward because of sickness.

The trust said it had since reduced the number of patients in the Fiennes Centre so nurses were not so stretched and demanded staff have the most up-to-date training in violence management and physical restraints before being allowed to work.

After lodging an official complaint in September 2013, Miss Betteridge got a letter from director of nursing and clinical standards Ros Alstead admitting the standards fell below what was expected by the trust.

In May 2014, the trust’s clinical case manager Rose-Anna Lidiard accepted liability for the incident and offered Miss Betteridge £500 compensation.

She obtained legal help from Sian Brown – an associate solicitor at Henmans Freeth – and sued the trust.

They reached an agreement in April for £3,650 in compensation.

Mrs Brown said: “This was an extremely distressing case.

Oxford Mail:
Action: Tracy Betteridge, who has sued the Oxford Health NHS Trust Foundation

“Tracy’s experience as a whole highlights the significant problems throughout the elderly care sector, where there are such extreme staff shortages that even basic care needs cannot be met.”

Trust spokesman Alistair Duncan said: “We would like to offer our sincerest apologies once again to the family. The care we provided on this occasion fell below the high standards we expect.

“Following our investigation into this incident, we found that no one individual was to blame for the injuries that were sustained. However insufficient staffing levels and some poor nursing practice did contribute to the patient’s subsequent fall.”