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A severely disabled man's lips and feet had a bluish appearance after he was left in a cold shower at a residential home, the Health and Disability Commissioner's Office has found.
Guy Tuffin, who stayed at Spectrum Care Trust's George St house in Papakura, also had to sleep on a urine-soaked and faeces-covered mattress for three weeks because the trust did not have a replacement.
Deputy Health and Disability Commissioner Tania Thomas has found that Spectrum Care, which runs 80 houses across Auckland housing 400 intellectually disabled people, failed to treat Mr Tuffin with respect and provide services in a manner which recognised his dignity and independence.
"The services provided were not consistent with his needs and did not optimise his quality of life," Ms Thomas said in a report released yesterday.
She found the trust had breached three rights under the Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers' Rights and ordered it to apologise for its breaches to Mr Tuffin and his welfare guardian, Allan McEvoy, who complained to the commissioner about his treatment.
It also has to arrange training on the code for all its staff and organise visits from health and disability advocates, who will be asked to attend at least monthly.
Ms Thomas also found the trust's care co-ordinator, named in the report as Ms E, had not complied with the trust's procedures for reporting of abuse and neglect. She also found Ms E had not acted ethically and ordered her to apologise to Mr Tuffin.
Other staff members were cleared of any breaches.
Mr Tuffin was not named in the report, being referred to only as Mr A, but has been identified in newspaper reports and by National MP Paul Hutchison.
Mr Tuffin has been in care since he was 3. He has been totally blind and partially deaf since birth and exhibits behavioural difficulties and a tendency towards self-injury. He needs 24-hour supervision.
In the showering incident in March last year, one of the carers at the George St house had put him under the shower after he had soiled himself and had left to load the house's other residents into a van.
She said she had yelled to another carer that he was in the shower. When that carer went there she found him sitting under cold water and had "a bluish appearance" around his lips and feet. The shower temperature was set at cold. The first carer said she had not left him under a cold shower.
The second carer turned the water to warm, dressed him and massaged him until his colour returned.
On the mattress issue, the trust had acknowledged Mr Tuffin's mattress needed to be replaced. A replacement was ordered, but as his mattress was custom-made because of his tendency to rip it, there was a delay.
Ms Thomas said it was unacceptable he had had to sleep on a soiled mattress for three weeks.
She said it appeared there were times when Mr Tuffin was not given his medication and these had not been reported or acted upon.
She believed some of the staff were either "insufficiently trained or otherwise unable to cope" with the challenging behaviours exhibited by the five men at the house.
Ms Thomas said she had decided not to refer the case to the Director of Proceedings.
Dr Hutchison said last night he found it astonishing that the deputy commissioner's report devoted only one paragraph to an earlier Ministry of Health audit of Spectrum Care.
"The audit found 'significant medication errors', 'no documented evidence of remedial action or retraining', and 'a culture of under-reporting'."
Spectrum Care chairman Richard Hanna said the trust had changed significantly since March 2006, when the commissioner found it in breach of the code of rights.
He said the trust was rated six out of seven in a Quality Standards accreditation survey in May this year involving 40 of its houses, including George St. From that, it received a three-year accreditation - the maximum term possible.
- NZPA
