Hull care worker denies abusing residents

A CARE worker cried as she told a jury she loved being a carer and did not abuse elderly residents. Kathryn Broadley gave evidence at Hull Crown Court yesterday.

She is on trial accused of four counts of ill-treating residents and two counts of neglect of women aged between 77 and 90 at Sycamore House Care Home in Wawne Road, Bransholme in 2007.

Tina Taylor, 53, of Camerton Grove, east Hull is also on trial accused of three counts of ill-treating residents at the same home.

Mrs Broadley, 59, cried as she told the court about her work as a carer.

She said: “I really love working as a carer. Sycamore House was lovely, a home from home. Everybody was friendly. The residents were difficult but they were lovely, they were funny. It was nice, a really genuinely nice place.

“I have been kicked, strangled, spit at and slapped. I was paid minimum wage. We didn’t work for the money, we didn’t do it for the money.

“Then they said two people had rung social services and they had to suspend us. They didn’t want to.

“As soon as they charged me I was sacked.”

Mrs Broadley, of Kinloss Garth, Bransholme, told the court she had 10 year’s experience of being a carer before she joined Sycamore House in 2005.

It is alleged she would wake residents at 5am against their will, pull the bed covers off them and drag them out of bed by their legs.

She denied banging the heads of any residents against walls and said she did not shout at them but did speak in a raised voice to deaf residents.

It is also alleged she washed residents with cold flannels and refused to change residents who had soiled themselves.

Mrs Broadley told the court that she “never” used cold flannels.

She said: “I never, ever did that. They wouldn’t be clean, they would smell.

“I knew they needed changing, I would change them.”

She denied ever slapping anyone or roughly handling them.

She added: “I was not being rough, I was just doing my job as best I could.”

Mrs Broadley is also accused of singing to residents to “wind them up”.

She declined to sing for the court but said the residents enjoyed her Ken Dodd songs.

Both Mrs Broadley and Mrs Taylor are accused of calling one resident, 87-year-old Florence Sanderson, a “rottweiler”.

Mrs Broadley added: “I didn’t call her a rottweiler, Tina did but not to her face and not in a nasty way. It was just a nickname. It sounds awful but it was not meant nastily.”

The offences are alleged to have taken place between April and November 2007, when they both worked at the home as carers.

Mrs Taylor is accused of incorrectly hoisting a resident and causing her to cry out in pain and of roughly undressing one woman.

The care home looks after 36 elderly residents who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, dementia and memory loss.

Both women deny the charges and the trial continues.