Judge orders review of woman’s care

Wandsworth Council has agreed to review its care of a 95-year-old
woman after the Court of Appeal slammed its decision-making process
last week.

Lord Justice Wall said he accepted it was Wandsworth’s genuine
opinion that Louisa Goldsmith’s interests might be best served in a
nursing home, but that its decision-making was “manifestly
defective”.

The council accepted the ruling and said it would now conduct the
review jointly with Wandsworth Primary Care Trust, home-managers
Servite and Goldsmith’s daughter.

The move followed the quashing of an earlier High Court ruling
dismissing Goldsmith’s claim for a judicial review of the council’s
plan to move her from the residential home she had lived in for
seven years.

Wandsworth had argued that, following hospital treatment for a fall
in May 2003, Goldsmith should be placed in a nursing home rather
than return to Mary Court in Battersea as she required a level of
care that could not be provided there.

But her daughter insisted her mother did not need nursing care and
that the care plan at Mary Court would only require slight
amendment. She was supported by reports from a consultant
psychiatrist and from nurses employed to be on call should extra
nursing be required.

Challenges to earlier attempts to close Mary Court in 1999 resulted
in a consent order which stated that Servite agreed to continue to
provide Goldsmith with accommodation and care at Mary Court until
she died or until her assessed needs could no longer be met there.