A DISABLED pensioner who had 30 carers in a year says she’s still suffering at the hands of unreliable care workers.

Three workers at a care home have been suspended after an inquest highlighted mistakes made before a man’s death.

A Care worker took more than £5,000 from residents over nine months, a court heard. Myrtle Jean Lewis, who had debts of £30,000, pocketed residents’ cash that should have been used for rent.

The future of five Devon care homes hangs in the balance as council bosses today announced further details of a £100m privatisation deal.

More than half of nurses on mental health wards have been physically attacked, a survey suggests.

Nurses working with older people are the most likely to be assaulted, the joint Healthcare Commission and Royal College of Psychiatrists report said.

The study of 69 NHS trusts and private hospitals in England and Wales said patients had also been attacked and more had to be done to stop violence.

Health bosses said the situation was taken “very seriously”. The audit covered eight in 10 of the organisations providing in-patient care for the 30,000 mental health patients in England and Wales.

Nurses, doctors, visitors and patients were all asked about whether they had suffered attacks, threats and what could be done about it.

Some 46% of nurses in mental health wards for working age patients said they had been assaulted. For those working in older people’s wards this rose to 64%.

A “FRUSTRATED” coroner has criticised a care home during an inquest into the death of a former patient.

A community is being asked to help catch a hooded arsonist who crept into a care home and started a blaze.

Plans for the first eco-friendly care home in England have been turned down by East Devon District Council. The council decided on Friday to refuse permission for the project at Douglas Avenue, Exmouth.

THE family of a 71-year-old disabled woman told of their disgust today after a care worker plundered her bank account.

Social workers are too often vilified for creating problems rather than given due credit for the work they do with the vulnerable, a senior Conservative politician said today.

Tim Loughton, the shadow children’s minister, told the National Children’s Services Commissioning Conference in London that social workers are caricatured as a result of general ignorance about what they actually do.

Loughton, who also chairs the Conservatives’ commission on social work, attacked what he described as the “deeply corrosive situation where too many social workers are seen as part of the problem rather than an integral part of the solution”.

He told the conference, which is supported by the Guardian, that recent research by the General Social Care Council found only 40% of the population see the contribution of social workers to society as “very important”.

“This is perhaps unsurprising when another survey found that more than half understood little or nothing about what social work involves,” said Loughton. “Misconceptions are too often fuelled by stereotyped social worker characters as they appear in the media, ranging from slightly alternative liberal busybodies to out-and-out child snatchers.