Dementia in all its guises is a bastard condition. Yes, it’s possible to live well with it. But in the end you lose your mind, your dignity and, ultimately, your life.
And so it was with my mum, Sheila – although not in the way I’d imagined. In October 2022 she was brutally attacked and beaten in her care home by another resident and died in hospital a few hours later without regaining consciousness. I was with her when she died.
Her attacker is now dead too. As a family we bore her no ill will. She too was a victim of the disease and was almost certainly not aware of her actions or their fatal consequences.
But the home in which they were both being “cared” for – the HC-One-owned Ridgeway Lodge in Dunstable – has some difficult questions to answer. We’re confident that the police, the Care Quality Commission and the coroner will, between them, help get to the bottom of what happened. And in doing so not just help two grieving families but, importantly, improve the quality of the the care provided to some of society’s most vulnerable citizens.
