Care home manager fined after 'exposing resident to significant risk of avoidable harm'

A care home manager has been fined after failing to provide safe care and treatment to a resident.

Suzanne Kirkbride, registered manager of Hall Lane Resource Centre, in Wythenshawe, pleaded guilty to an offence contrary to Regulation 12 (2) and 22 (2) of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 relating to a failure to provide safe care and treatment to Laura Margaret Donnelly which exposed her to a significant risk of avoidable harm.

Today, Thursday, August 27, Kirkbride was ordered to pay £2,333, including a £1,666 fine and £667 court costs.

It comes after concerns were raised by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) surrounding Ms Donnelly's condition and welfare including diabetes, fluid and hydration and medicine management, a spokesperson said. No further details have been shared.

 Rosalind Sanderson, the CQC’s Deputy Director of Enforcement, said: “This is a distressing case, and our sympathies are with Laura’s family and those affected by her death. Suzanne Kirkbride failed in her duty to protect her by placing her in an unsafe service where staff weren’t trained to understand her condition and manage her complex needs.

“This fine is not representative of the value of Laura’s life, but this, and the prosecution should be a reminder to all care providers that they must always ensure people’s safety and manage risks to their wellbeing.

“The majority of adult social care services provide safe and effective care for people using their service. However, where we find someone has been put at risk of harm, we will use our regulatory enforcement powers to protect people.”

A spokesperson for the Care Quality Commission said it does not keep the court-issued fines, with the money going directly to HM Treasury instead. 

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/care-home-manager-fined-after-34528570

‘Not afforded any dignity or humanity’: the children’s hospitals England has not examined...

‘Some children and young people were not afforded any dignity or humanity’, Ruth Innes KC, Senior Counsel to the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry, said that last October, closing the evidence on the institutions where disabled and chronically ill children were sent to live. England and Wales ran institutions of the same kind, and some of the children sent to them are still alive.

Scotland is asking what happened in them. In April, the Inquiry published research it had commissioned into the abuse of disabled children in residential institutions, and the finding was that the evidence barely exists: patterns of failure can be traced across the UK and internationally, but the record is too thin to establish what happened, or to draw the lessons that would protect such children now. England and Wales are not asking.hart 

Phase 9 of the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry’s investigations examined residential care for children and young people with long-term healthcare needs, additional support needs, and disabilities. There were forty-three days of hearings, 133 witnesses, seventeen institutions, with care provided by the National Health Service, local authorities, and voluntary and private bodies. The emergent themes include failures to listen to children, inadequate training, excessive restraint and sedation, and leadership that was ‘autocratic, dysfunctional or absent’. Sixteen volumes of findings have been published. Those relating to Phase 9 are still to come.

Northern Ireland covered comparable ground earlier. The Hart Inquiry’s remit ran from 1922 to 1995 and expressly included hospitals. It produced an apology delivered in the Assembly Chamber in March 2022, and a redress board that had received 5,496 applications by the time it closed to new claims on 2 April 2025. England and Wales have neither asked nor apologised.

The absence is not for want of a subject. Between 1900 and 1950 bovine tuberculosis, contracted from infected milk, killed more than 800,000 people in England and Wales and disabled many more, working-class children disproportionately among them. Those with osteoarticular disease could spend years in orthopaedic institutions, immobilised in plaster, on unheated open-air wards, with parents allowed an hour’s visit once a month. In 1937 a two-and-a-half-year-old boy was taken from his mother’s arms in Sheffield to the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital for Crippled Children in the Rivelin Valley. He spent much of the next five years there. He described the ward in the plainest terms: ‘Hospital life was organised, but crude. There was nothing to soften it. It was lonely, but I couldn’t name the feeling then.’ A nurse had told him that when the hands on the clock reached a certain place, his mother would come. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘she never did.’

He was one of thousands, and his childhood is not the point. The point is that nobody has ever asked, formally, what happened to those children.

Some are still here to say so. Two survivors, both in their eighties, have recently written to me. Bob Shaw spent his childhood hospitalisation at St Cuthbert’s Convalescent Home in Malvern and at St Gerard’s Orthopaedic Hospital in Coleshill, admitted in 1948, just before the founding of the National Health Service. He wrote: ‘I still cannot take it in that this happened to thousands of children. I always thought it was just the hospitals I was in.’ Valerie Muncer, née Poole, was five when she was taken to the Princess Elizabeth Children’s Hospital in Hackney in January 1946. She spent the five years that followed at Hackney, then at Tehidy Sanatorium in Cornwall until 1951, when Tehidy was sold to the NHS, and finally at Falmouth Hospital until she was ten. Writing her own account for her family, she stopped short at what she was recovering: ‘Was this me? This poor child.’ Their institutions differed. The regime did not.

None of this requires hindsight. The Platt Report of 1959 was itself an official acknowledgement that the regime it replaced had harmed children. John Bowlby’s 1951 monograph for the World Health Organization, and the 1952 film A Two-Year-Old Goes to Hospital by James Robertson, a pioneering psychiatric social worker and psychoanalyst who studied childhood separation alongside Bowlby at the Tavistock Clinic, made the case in terms policy-makers understood while children like these were still on the wards. Implementation was glacial: a survey in 1982 still found forty-eight per cent of children’s wards without unrestricted parental access.

England and Wales have examined a version of this problem once. The Ely Hospital Inquiry of 1969, chaired by Geoffrey Howe QC, looked at a long-stay NHS institution in Cardiff whose wards included children, established that isolation from outside scrutiny had allowed harm to persist, and led directly to the Hospital Advisory Service in 1970. That logic was never extended to the orthopaedic and tuberculosis cohort of the pre-antibiotic decades. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse addressed only sexual abuse. The Cumberlege Review addressed medicines and devices, but its framing of historical harm through acknowledgement rather than criminal fault is the model that fits here. Most of what was done to these children was lawful and medically endorsed. The case for looking is not to apportion blame. It is to recognise and learn.

Pre-NHS institutional records survive unevenly. Some admission registers and annual reports remain. But the clinical record barely exists as a body of material, and what does survive records the treatment rather than the child. A statutory inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005 needs a minister to initiate it, and members of the pre-Platt cohort are now in their eighties and nineties. That bar may not be cleared in time. Lower ones are within reach. The Health and Social Care Committee could take historical evidence. The action plan for tuberculosis in England expires this year and its successor, for 2026 to 2031, is being drafted now. The Department of Health and Social Care or the UK Health Security Agency could take the opportunity to commission a historical annex to it. Either would begin what Scotland and Northern Ireland have accepted is warranted: securing the records of institutions that no longer exist, gathering the testimony that survives while those who hold it are alive, and acknowledging that these children were the state’s responsibility.

The Sheffield boy was Harry Drabble. He died in 2022, aged eighty-seven. Shortly before his death he was asked whether he wanted his story kept within the family. He replied: ‘Publish.’ He feared that without the evidence of survivors the mistakes of his era would be made again. The question is not whether the country cares. It is whether it will do what Scotland and Northern Ireland have already done.

About the author

Helen Parker-Drabble is an author, speaker, and independent scholar who recovers ordinary lives from the traces they leave behind. She writes under the series Who Do I Think You Were?®, and her book ‘Yet’: A Story of Triumph over Childhood Separation, Trauma, and Disability (2025) reconstructs her father’s five years in a Sheffield hospital for children with tuberculosis. Her peer-reviewed writing has appeared in Genealogy and The Local Historian. She can be contacted at helen@helenparkerdrabble.com.

https://historyandpolicy.org/opinion-articles/articles/not-afforded-any-dignity-or-humanity-the-childrens-hospitals-england-has-not-examined/

Former Oxfordshire policeman facing misconduct hearing for 'lies'

Former Police Constable Liam Yeo is accused of falsifying records by allegedly making false and misleading entries into the police database NICHE and a case file.

These entries reportedly indicated he had spoken to a witness.

If found to have falsified the record, the officer would be in breach of the standards of professional behaviour in relation to honesty and integrity, orders and instructions, duties and responsibilities and discreditable conduct.

This means the panel could rule that he would have been dismissed had they still been serving.

In addition, his details could be place on the College of Policing Barred List, which legally prevents him from ever working in policing, the National Crime Agency, or other specific law enforcement and security bodies

The public misconduct hearing will take place virtually on Wednesday, August 5, 2026, at 1.30pm, overseen by Chief Constable Jason Hogg.

The officer, who has since left the force, was based at Didcot Police Station.

A spokesperson for police said: "It is alleged the officer put false and misleading entries into NICHE and a case file, indicating that he had spoken to a witness.

"If found it is alleged that the officer would be in breach of the standards of professional behaviour in relation to honesty and integrity, orders and instructions, duties and responsibilities and discreditable conduct."

In Malta Courtroom, Murdered Journalist's Son Describes Last Day With His Mother...

Matthew Caruana Galizia has testified about the assassination of his mother, a journalist who spent years investigating government corruption in Malta. Businessman Yorgen Fenech is alleged to have ordered the 2017 murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. He has pleaded not guilty.

Matthew Caruana Galizia was at home in Malta working at his laptop on the morning of October 16, 2017, when he heard the explosion that killed his mother, investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Testifying today before a jury in the trial of businessman Yorgen Fenech, who is charged with commissioning the murder, her son described the last hours he spent with her — and the investigations she was pursuing when she died.

Fenech has pleaded not guilty to charges of complicity and criminal association in the case, which is unfolding in a courtroom in Malta’s capital, Valletta. panama 

Daphne Caruana Galizia had spent years reporting on government corruption. She was 53 years old when she was killed by a bomb placed under her car seat and detonated remotely by SMS.  

"My mother made me some lunch. She saw I hadn't eaten anything. She had a phone call and left the house,” Matthew Caruana Galizia testified. 

“She came back in. She had forgotten my dad's chequebook — her account was frozen at the time, and he would sign cheques she could use,” he recalled. “Then she left for the last time."

He was a software programmer at the time, and he went back to his work, with music playing in the background. 

"Soon after she left the house, I heard an extremely loud explosion," Matthew Caruana Galizia testified.

He went down the lane towards the main road, walking faster and faster until he was running. He saw a tall column of smoke.

"I looked through the fire and saw a black shadow in the car. I thought, 'That's my mom.' I looked around to see if there was something I could use to open the door,” he said. “Then I saw a leg on the ground. I thought: for nothing, it's over."

A police car arrived, and officers took out a fire extinguisher. He shouted at them to use it.  "One of them was crying. He told me it was useless," Matthew Caruana Galizia testified.

Before that day, he told the court, he had been a regular person, going to work, taking holidays, spending time with friends. Everything changed the moment his mother was murdered. From then on, he focused on finding her killers. 

"My work became the investigation. It became justice," he said. "I put all of my energy into this. This is not something an ordinary person should do, but we couldn't just sit back and expect things to happen on their own.”

Much of Matthew Caruana Galizia’s testimony concerned the investigation his mother was working on when she was killed. It involved the Electrogas Project, a multi-million euro Maltese government plan to build a new gas power station. Fenech was a shareholder in a company involved in the project.

Keith Schembri, who was chief of staff for then-prime minister Joseph Muscat, testified last week that Fenech had “said things that led me to believe that he might have been the one who did it,” referring to ordering the assasination.

Fenech has alleged that Schembri ordered the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, as have two of the three convicted hitmen. Schembri is not charged in the murder case and has rejected the allegations. 

More - 
 https://www.occrp.org/en/news/in-malta-courtroom-murdered-journalists-son-describes-last-day-with-his-mother

Journalists warn against PSNI chief's offers amid spying allegations...

Two prominent journalists, Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey, are advising fellow media professionals not to accept any offers of personal meetings with PSNI Chief Constable Jon Boutcher regarding PSNI spying operations against them.

Their warning follows the latest revelations that the PSNI spied on former BBC journalists Barney Rowan and Vincent Kearney in 2006. Rowan, a former BBC security editor, had his phone monitored by the PSNI after writing a story on the killing of Denis Donaldson in April 2006.

Donaldson was a police and MI5 agent within Sinn Féin.

Boutcher has now offered to meet Rowan in person. “I am happy to meet with him to discuss any issues or concerns he may have,” he told the BBC.

However, Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey, the journalists whose legal case first exposed the PSNI spying operation against journalists, have warned reporters from taking up the chief constable’s offer of informal briefings on their individual cases.

“We believe that these offers from the chief constable are a deliberate and cynical attempt to thwart any proper independent scrutiny of the PSNI spying operation against journalists,” said Birney.

The two reporters pointed to a report, commissioned by the chief constable in 2024, in which English barrister Angus McCullough KC was asked to investigate PSNI surveillance of journalists.

“From the very outset of the McCullough Review we questioned why it was only allowed to investigate cases from 2011 to 2023,” McCaffrey explained.

“We repeatedly urged that Angus McCullough be allowed to investigate surveillance against journalists from the formation of the PSNI in 2001 unto the present day.

“We were told by McCullough and others that the chief constable was adamant that the investigation into spying on journalists could not go back prior to 2011.

“We were told this was purely about value for money and nothing else.

“The latest evidence that at least two other journalists were being spied on in 2006 shows that those assurances were false.

“We believe the McCullough review and the Policing Board were deliberately misled by the PSNI to prevent any proper investigation into spying against journalists prior to 2011.

“It is now clear that Angus McCullough was only allowed to investigate a fraction of the spying that went on against journalists. What possible benefit to public confidence in policing is that?”

By December 2025 the McCullough review had cost £750,000. The barrister is expected to produce further findings next year, but will not be allowed to investigate any PSNI spying against journalists prior to 2011.

Mr Birney further questioned the chief constable’s claims that there is no evidence that the PSNI has continued spying on journalists since 2015.

“It is crystal clear from our case that Barry McCaffrey and myself were under unlawful PSNI surveillance in August 2018. Disclosure in our legal case also showed that PSNI monitored the mobile phone of one BBC Spotlight journalist in March 2022.

“In 2024 the PSNI confirmed that monitoring of journalist calls had only been suspended in March 2023 when our legal case became public knowledge. So, for Jon Boutcher to claim that no journalist was being spied on after 2015 is simply untrue.”

Advising any journalist against accepting any PSNI offer of informal briefings, McCaffrey said:

“Any reporter who is prepared to accept any informal assurance from Jon Boutcher that everything is fine and there is nothing to worry about is doing a major disservice to the journalistic profession.

“Only a proper, independent, judge-led inquiry into PSNI and security services surveillance against journalists is acceptable. That is the only thing that will restore the serious damage which the PSNI and security services has already done to public confidence in policing.

“Mr Boutcher’s offers of informal chats with individual journalists is an insult to our profession and no self-respecting journalist should accept any such offer.”

 https://www.thedetail.tv/articles/journalists-warn-against-psni-chief-s-offers-amid-spying-allegations