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Old May 18th, 2014 #9
Bev
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Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: England
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A judge has slammed a council for removing an elderly woman from her home while the son who cared for her was out.

It took the son 19 days to get the council to tell him where they had taken his mother, and only after he resorted to legal threats.

District Judge Paul Mort described Milton Keynes Council’s treatment of the 81-year-old woman, a former magistrate with severe dementia, as ‘woefully inadequate’.

The council’s social services staff removed the woman and put her in a care home as they thought she may have been abused by her son, who lived with her. But their own inquiries and a subsequent police investigation found no evidence.

Judge Mort said the manner in which the social services removed the woman without getting the correct court orders violated her human rights, and described it as ‘unlawful detainment’.

He also said she now has little prospect of being able to return to her home.



The council has since agreed to apologise to the woman and her son for its ‘failings’.

The details emerged in a ruling made by the judge at the Court of Protection, which deals with cases involving sick and vulnerable people.

He ordered that the woman and her son could not be identified. The woman, a magistrate for 20 years, was described as ‘very independent’. She went to church every Sunday as well as to Bible classes.

The judge said the woman had lived at her house for 32 years and was rooted in her local community. Her son sold his business abroad so he and his partner, along with a care worker he employed, could look after her.

The judge said that in September 2012 the manager of a care centre the woman attended had raised concerns about bruises and scratches on her face and legs. A month later, a visiting student social worker saw more injuries and alerted her bosses.


The same day, the social worker and a colleague visited again while only the care worker was there and removed the woman. The son found out where his mother was after his solicitor wrote to Milton Keynes Council threatening legal action.

The son described to The Mail on Sunday yesterday how he returned home to find his mother gone. He said: ‘The care worker said to me, “The council have taken her to a place of safety.”

‘I thought you need a warrant to enter someone’s house, but they just came and took her away.’

He said it was possible that because the care worker was foreign, she did not understand the sort of rights Britons might expect. He also said he was eventually given access to his mother at the care home, but under severe restrictions. ‘I was only allowed to visit her in the afternoons, and a staff member sat with us,’ he said.

Judge Mort lifted council restrictions that prevented the son from seeing his mother without being monitored by social workers. He can now see her as many times as he likes and take her out.

The ruling also gives the son grounds to make further appeals to bring his mother home. Milton Keynes Council could not be contacted for comment.
ht tp://ww w.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2631432/Judges-fury-social-workers-grab-pensioner-house-son-out.html
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