NHS patients who complain about a poor standard of care are at risk of being victimised, health inspectors warn today after the first national audit of the complaints system in England.

A woman of 103, served with an eviction notice by her nursing home, has died six weeks after being forced to move out.

{mosimage}Esme Collins couldn’t cope with the upheaval of moving to a new care home and ‘seemed to give up,’ her daughter said.

Both relatives and campaigners feared such a tragic outcome when Mrs Collins was originally threatened with eviction in a row with the local authority over funding in July, but efforts to keep her at the home she has lived in for eight years were thwarted by the owner.

Her daughter Esme Simpson, 84, of Worksop, Notts, admitted she was ‘bitter’ about her mother’s treatment.

She said: “How can you explain to a 103-year-old that she was being evicted over money? She didn’t deserve the awful indignity of being used as a weapon in a financial row.

“The whole experience has left me very bitter.”

Mrs Collins was transferred on 9 August from Abbeymoor nursing home in Worksop to Barnby Court in Retford 10 miles away. She is understood to have died about 10 days ago.

Mrs Simpson, who attended her mother’s funeral yesterday, said: “I have been 100 per cent grateful to the people at Barnby Court for the care and love they showed her. But not being around the Abbeymoor staff, who had been her family for eight years, she just seemed to give up.

The family of a young care worker who was killed after being caught in crossfire between two gunmen paid tribute to their daughter last night, describing her as the “flower of a rose and a ray of sun”.

A Polish care worker shot in the head when she walked into a gangland fight in London was talking to her sister in Poland on her mobile phone when she was hit.

{mosimage}Magda Pniewska’s sister listened in horror, from their home town of Brzeg, as two gunshots rang out before the line cut out. She spent the next hours trying to get a reply.

Miss Pniewska, 26, who left Poland about four years ago to take up opportunities when her native country joined the European Union, had become another crime statistic.

She was killed when two young men traded gunshots from 50 yards apart near her home in New Cross, southeast London, on Monday evening.

Moments earlier Miss Pniewska had closed the door behind her at the BUPA nursing home where she worked with mentally ill patients to walk 150 yards home to the flat she shared with her Polish boyfriend.

As she approached a set of steps on the housing estate, where one of the men was standing, the gun battle started. She had no time to take cover and was hit in the head by a bullet. She was pronounced dead at King’s College Hospital.

An old friend, Tomasz Dragan, 26, told The Times last night that her family was “in deep sadness and cannot believe media reports”.

Some victims of sex traffickers rescued from prostitution in a new national police crackdown will face deportation, the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, said yesterday.

A protest is to take place over plans to close four care homes in the West Midlands. Under a shake-up of services for the elderly, Sandwell Council plans to close homes at Bromford, Kingsbury, Birchfield and Knowle.

Care homes should be barred from hiding drugs in the food and drink of elderly residents, campaigners said yesterday.

{mosimage}The call follows concern that nursing staff are dishing out sedatives to the frail and elderly without their knowledge or consent. The new campaign follows official acknowledgement that drugs are often badly handled in care homes.

Last year the Government’s inspection body, the Commission for Social Care Inspection, reported that nearly half of all care home residents do not get the correct drugs and warned of risks of ‘wilful maladministration of medicine’.

The ‘chemical cosh’ for confused and vulnerable people can make life easy for those who are looking after them.

But it can also lead to a rapid decline in health and risk of death for the residents who are sedated.

Complaints over covert medication were raised with the Scottish Parliament by Hunter Watson, who discovered that care home staff were giving medication to his mother disguised in her meals.

He told the BBC: “It shouldn’t happen. It is very very convenient for staff at care homes to conceal drugs in the food and drink of residents, not for therapeutic problems but to make the residents easier to manage.

The owner of two Devon care homes has called in administrators following trading difficulties. Starlight Care Ltd, which owns the Swallowcliffe home in Seaton and the Koppers home in Kilmington, has called in Exeter corporate recovery firm Begbies Traynor.

Plans have been unveiled to build six state-of-the-art residential homes. The proposals are part of a 10-year plan by the county council and primary care trust to modernise care for the elderly in north and west Cumbria.

Thirty six of the most innovative and effective social care and training providers across England have won the chance to win a national award at the Skills for Care Accolades gala presentation evening.