Struggling for control

Julie Stewart in the video put out in 2011 by South Lanarkshire Council in relation to adult protection had asserted `We will always look at a referral` whilst the gap toothed and ageing Jim Cameron had taken a photo opportunity to promote his leaflet telling others to voice their concerns. Shortly after their campaign John Kilbride was being informed by social services `We will not be communicating with you,`and without providing him with any more information.  In other words whatever concerns John Kilbride might have had about his drug addicted brother and his grasping sister they would never be given the light of day. It was not as if the social worker had been unaware that John Kilbride wished to communicate with her. She had documented this in the social work records. (At least that part had been accurate.) Contradictory, hypocritical, and weird.


As John Kilbride proceeded with his case he found many instances where the authorities were putting out messages, and congratulating themselves on their care of the elderly, whilst in practise and secretly they were processing matters in a completely contradictory way. In Mrs Kilbride`s case, this may well have started because Misha McTavish had been lacking in experience as John Kilbride had first interpreted their situation.  In due course, he felt Misha McTavish was too well protected by the system for the system itself to be innocent. Was it not a fact that all front line staff had their line managers who then had their team leaders?  Misha McTavish had been too sure of herself not to have had this hierarchy involved. Her one mistake had been that she had informed John Kilbride of the proposed power of attorney.


                         How to steal your family inheritance

 

The double appointment was set up with Dr Hunter for 23 June 2011 eventually. Fortunately as the family doctor, Dr Hunter knew both of them. It was hoped that there would be no more delays and John Kilbride and his mother could get on with processing a power of attorney with John as his mother`s attorney. All they needed was confirmation from his mother`s GP by way of the required certificate that Mrs Kilbride had the capacity to understand what she was doing. The bank manager at Clydesdale bank on 9 June 2011 had been satisfied that indeed Mrs Kilbride had capacity and duly signed the document to change Mrs Kilbride`s mandate. Dr Hunter would know more about his mother`s diagnosis but the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act was quite clear that capacity and vulnerability were not one and the same. Each decision a vulnerable adult had to make was to be judged in such terms as: `Does this person understand and can she make THIS decision here and now?`


Reflecting back over their various encounters, John Kilbride recalled the relaxed meeting he had unexpectedly had with his brother in the queue at the check out at his mother`s bank on 5 May 2011.  He now had the evidence in front of him that showed why George Kilbride had been so nonchalant about their mother`s transfer to Morrieburn care home. He had been stealing his mother`s money behind her back and as long as George had the mandate for the bank and wished to continue stealing it was better for him if his mother was put out of harm`s way. George was his brother and John had always tried his best to meet him half way, but there was a limit to what John Kilbride could forgive or ever want to understand.


George Kilbride`s last withdrawal from his mother`s current account was for £700 on 8 June 2011.  The very next day his mother put a stop to this financial abuse by changing her mandate and appointing John instead. In the meantime there were other matters to attend to, and it was a growing concern to John Kilbride that he had evidence in the care home visitor`s book that nobody other than himself was visiting his mother.  As it was, he had a note from his mother that she wished him to look into her affairs and a changed mandate but he had no other documentation. What bills did his mother have to pay?  How were they being processed, if at all?  As far as he could see his mother had only one direct debit for a telephone she could not use whilst locked in the care home. What was to be done about his mother`s requirement for her clothes, reading aids and a new set of false teeth?  It was all very well to receive lectures from care workers that Mrs Kilbride needed more clothes but there were practical difficulties in dealing with his mother`s care at every turn without the details. For instance, what organisation would not ask for a reference number or details about the last transaction?


He recalled that day his mother searched for her purse and no purse could be found.  She was looking for money in order to pay for tea from a trolley which would never come.  She could not have been more impoverished or helpless. Anybody with a pang of pity would have been moved as John was that day to assist her. The more he thought about it, the more he realised he was also helpless without the details. Everybody was on the run and making sure they would not communicate with him or his mother. Yet Mrs Kilbride did not have the key to her own front door and was locked away from all her correspondence and documentation, the very material he needed to get on top of his mother`s affairs and her care. It would have been less complicated if John Kilbride had not lived four flights up, making it impossible to provide his mother with a roof over her head. In her own ground floor flat he would have been prepared to do all that was necessary 24/7. He had said that in front of a doctor. Social Work knew that because it was documented rather deviously in their records. Was that why he was being dismissed?


There came a point when he felt that he could no longer postpone the inevitable.  Mother and son drew closer as they plotted how they would go about it.  It was important that his mother`s intentions would be clear; and as well as that it was important to his mother that she would not invite any suspicion or trouble onto her son John. In order that no-one would misunderstand his mother`s intentions they made another trip to the bank although strictly speaking because John Kilbride had the mandate that was unnecessary. Mrs Kilbride made a withdrawal and handed the money to John. Her instructions were that he would make an appointment with a locksmith, change the lock on her door and allow them to gain entry to her flat.


As soon as he could that same day John Kilbride made the telephone call and the appointment with the locksmith was arranged for the following day.

It was a rather peculiar summer and there were days of heavy rain. On 21 June 2011 the rain started early and was torrential. According to John Kilbride it was like a monsoon and his mother`s feet would have been soaked just walking from the care home to the car.  She did wear the non-slip slippers all the time after he gave them to her but they were not weatherproof. (Mrs Kilbride can be seen wearing the blue slippers in the photograph for this blog.) It was for this reason John Kilbride decided to meet the locksmith himself rather than collect his mother from the care home and have her walk through the puddles. Nor would it have been pleasant for his mother after a soaking to sit waiting in the car in such weather. Looking back he wonders how things would have turned out if he had not made that decision. He knows he made it for the best of reasons and hindsight is a great thing but he could never have predicted the events which followed.   

The locksmith did the job speedily with a professional lock picking gun to remove the lock on the door.  Five minutes and they were in, followed by another few minutes to fit on the new lock. John Kilbride paid the man by cash and ensured he kept hold of the receipt. On gaining entry to the flat the first thing John Kilbride did was to pick up his mother`s mail behind the door in case it would get wet.  He also needed to go through it in order to weed out any outstanding bills from the usual trash mail.  His first shock was the letter which was addressed to his mother dated 16 June 2011 from South Lanarkshire Homefinder.  It stated:


I am writing to you about your recent request to defer your application for housing.


I am pleased to tell you that this request has been processed and you will not be considered for any offers of housing until 15 December 2011.


If your circunstances change and you wish to be considered for housing before this date, please contact me on the phone number below.


There was no way Mrs Kilbride had made a request to defer her application for housing.  The only time Mrs Kilbride left the care home was when her son John took her out and she never at any time posted an application or went near the housing department.  Not only that but John knew that his mother was desperate to leave the care home.  She hated it.  It was a terrible place and she had every reason to feel that way. Given the communication John Kilbride had received from social services, that his mother was not going to get sheltered housing, here was clear evidence that somehow social services and South Lanarkshire Homefinder had schemed together to keep Mrs Kilbride in the care home rather than provide her with more appropriate housing.


It got worse.  The next shock John Kilbride got was after opening the large envelope.  Here was a letter from the Office of the Scottish Public Guardian also dated 16 June 2011.


ADULTS WITH INCAPACITY (SCOTLAND) 2000
REGISTRATION OF POWER OF ATTORNEY


I am writing to inform you that the Public Guardian`s Office has registered the above Power of Attorney on 16 June 2011.  The original Power of Attorney document and certificate has been sent to the sender of this Power of Attorney.


Please note should your Power of Attorney document make provisions to appoint substitute attorneys, if you have not already done so, you should advise all substitute attorney of their appointment and that this office may require to contact them at some point in the future.


Should you have any query about this or any other matter please do not hesitate to contact this office quoting the above PG reference number.


Examining the Power of Attorney he could see that it was in favour of his brother George Kilbride.  John could hardly believe it.  How was that possible?  There were six pages of small print that John could barely read despite wearing his reading glasses, but every power imaginable was being handed over to George, even to deciding what his mother could eat, or wear or who she could see. The document had been drafted on 20 May 2011 when his mother had been locked away in the care home which meant that it had been set up about a week after Misha McTavish had told John that she would no longer be communicating with him and his brother George was going to try to get a power of attorney. So George had tried and succeeded and the social worker had known all about it in advance. What did this word `try` signify? That some solicitors would and some solicitors would not?


John Kilbride looked for his mother`s signature and it was not there. Instead in the solicitor`s own handwriting she states:


This Power of Attorney consisting of this and the five proceeding pages have been read over to the said E Kilbride by me, Ms Richards, solicitor 2 Strathmore House, New Town and is signed by me for and with authority of and in the presence of the said E Kilbride who has declared she is unable to write and witnessed as shown below at New Town on 20 May 2011.


It was witnessed by a paralegal who worked in the same office as Ms Richards. How many crooks were there in New Town? 

Unbelievable as that might seem to many people, anybody who did research about solicitors who were fraudsters, would find that there were crooked lawyers in the South Lanarkshire area. John Kilbride had just discovered that Ms Richards was another one of them. Ms Richards was a liar.  His mother, Mrs Kilbride, could write just fine, even without her reading aids and did so on 2 June 2011 and 9 June 2011 and in doing so had made her intentions clear.  What was set up for her behind her back and without her signature she did not want.

Diary of Injustice

 

According to predictions in 2010 by South Lanarkshire Council, by 2035 the population of South Lanarkshire was projected to be 331,234, an increase of 6.2 per cent compared to the population in 2010.  The population in Scotland was projected to increase by 10.2 per cent between 2010 and 2035.  Over the 25 year period, the age group that was projected to increase the most in size in South Lanarkshire was the 75+ age group.  Probably the various agencies alarmed by this projection were all ready working in partnership to address the problem when Mrs Kilbride fell into the system in 2011.  John Kilbride could think of no other reason why the system engulfed Mrs Kilbride as easily as it did because he knew that it was not just a crooked lawyer who was involved. But he had these thoughts much later.

 

Meanwhile he swept up the bills on the table in the living room and made a quick dash around the flat to see if there were any other documents that were important.  He did find a drawer full of paperwork and wasted no time going through it, but scooped the whole lot up and placed the bundle in a black bin bag he found in the kitchen. He was dismayed to see that his mother`s king sized bed was no longer in her bedroom and there were piles of blankets on the floor and he had serious suspicions about that. He opened wardrobes to find them empty. Somebody had been removing his mother`s clothes and the only `somebody` he could think of who would do that was his sister Irene who had possession of the original front door key.

 

 

There were no photographs or jewellery anywhere in the flat. He became so agitated and angry that he had to leave the flat there and then with the paperwork.because it was impossible to focus on what to do next. One thing he was certain of was that his mother was never supposed to see the two letters; one deferring her application for sheltered housing, and the other about the Power of Attorney.  Both had been addressed to her home address whilst Mrs Kilbride was sitting in Morrieburn and locked out of her home.  How convenient was that?

After closing the door the thought struck him that his brother would probably be calling in to his mother`s flat soon to pick up the Power of Attorney. After all he was the one who had tried and succeeded and knew all about it. He might soon become aware that his mother had changed her mandate at the bank.  That would set George into a panic.  John had no idea how much Irene knew about the Power of Attorney. It could not have been much because knowing his sister she would have objected to the powers being handed over to George, especially those concerning her mother`s finances, if she had been aware of the matter. As it was, George had been stealing the money whilst Irene had been rummaging through their mother`s belongings. What a pair! John rushed around the flat again looking for a pen and paper. His head was racing as he scribbled a discrete note explaining he had a new set of keys and placed it on the door. He took the wheelchair loaned to his mother from a relative, folded it, and placed it in the car.


There were a couple of important matters he had to check back in his own flat. He ascertained that the powers that George would have as his mother`s attorney would come into force as soon as his mother was assessed as lacking capacity to make her own decisions. The word assessment he heard the social worker use regarding sheltered housing now took on a whole different meaning.  There was no doubt about it.  His mother was being stitched up and the next thing to be arranged for her would be a capacity assessment. Until that happened his mother was free to change any power of attorney which had been registered with the Public Guardian. It meant their joint appointment with Dr Hunter now had a greater significance and it was necessary in order to revoke the Power of Attorney registered on 16 June 2011. No longer could his mother simply be rescued by unlocking her flat.


He got something to eat back at his home before getting himself ready to visit his mother.  He arrived at Morrieburn in the early evening after the residents` mealtime because visitors were not allowed into the care home at these times.  After greeting the dog and surveying the sitting room he was surprised to discover that his mother was in her room and already in her bed.  She awoke and thought it was morning and complained that she had missed her breakfast.  Apart from that one complaint she was too groggy to have any kind of discussion with him and he left, reminding her that he would see her on thursday because they were going to see Dr Hunter.


Not knowing quite why, because his thoughts were spinning with the amount of material he already had to absorb, he did not visit his mother on the wednesday. He was having to deal with a double pronged attack, one from his family and the other from social services in some way that he did not understand at that time.  He knew that he did not want any confrontation with anybody or anything to get in his mother`s way. He did not want any care worker to say something like: `Does George know? because he was afraid he was so wound up he might blow his top. There was a fear building up in him and he realised how important the visit to Dr Hunter was going to be.  On wednesday afternoon he headed for his mother`s flat again in order to have another attempt at appraising the situation. The new lock had been removed.  In its place was a badly fitted lock and the side panel was scratched.  It was an amaturish job.


No doubt about it!  His family did not approve of his mother gaining access to her flat, but then they had a lot to cover up about what they had been doing! 


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