North Somerset care home staff sentenced for ill-treating resident
Three former care home workers who mistreated a resident with Alzheimer's disease have been barred for life from working with vulnerable adults.
The abuse was captured on a hidden camera installed at the Granary, near Bristol, by Gladys Wright's family.
Daniel Baynes, Tomasz Gidaszewski and Janusz Salnikow, pleaded guilty to ill-treatment, which took place in 2012.
Baynes also admitted stealing food and was jailed for four months. The others were given community orders.
Salnikow was also given a suspended jail sentence.
Sentencing the men at Bristol Crown Court, Judge Michael Longman said: "What you did was in breach of the most basic duty of care and humanity you had undertaken to perform."
Mrs Wright, who was 79 at the time of the abuse, died in March.
Her family are now calling for cameras to be installed in all care homes.
The camera footage showed her being roughly handled, grabbed by the throat, teased or ignored.
Her son Jim Wright said seeing his mother being mistreated was "harrowing".
"It's absolutely disgusting. It's the opposite of care. It's neglect. It's abuse.
"She was thrown about like she was a sack of something. There was no respect," he said.
Jeremy Nixey, chief executive of Shaw Group, which owns and operates the Granary Dementia Care Centre, said: "We only knew about this when the family brought us the footage and within a matter of hours we suspended three staff and we told the police within hours.
"I think this was shocking care - or absence of care - by three individuals out of a staff of 150 and they have been rightly judged by the law."
He said the home had replaced the management because it "wasn't a good enough listening management and supportive management".
Mr Nixey said he could not "know what happens 24 hours a day in every resident's life" but said the staff "watched one another".
"The exceptional cases that we've heard about today are quite exceptional and they are untypical," he said.
Det Insp Mark Coleman, from Avon and Somerset Police, said: "These men were in a position of trust and they abused the trust placed in them by Gladys and her family.
"I hope the positive action we have taken in this case gives the families of, and staff working with, vulnerable people who have concerns regarding their care the confidence to report those concerns and the reassurance that those concerns will be taken seriously."