MP Raises Case Of Woman Involuntarily In Care Home

An MP has asked the government to investigate how a disabled woman was moved to a nursing home against her will.

Lucinda Ritchie was not allowed to return to her adapted bungalow in Billingshurst, West Sussex, in February after a hospital stay for pneumonia and was instead taken to a nursing home.

John Milne, the MP for Horsham, asked the government to “look into Lucinda’s case” in the House of Commons on Tuesday.

Parliamentary under-secretary Jake Richards MP said he was “very happy to deal with that case in writing”.

Ritchie, a master’s student and charity ambassador, was admitted to hospital with pneumonia in April and suffered further complications that prolonged her stay.

Her condition deteriorated within two days at the nursing home after her discharge and she returned to hospital.

Ritchie has multiple disabilities. She has a tracheostomy and has primarily used eye-gaze technology to communicate since 2017.

Prior to her hospital admission, Ritchie had 24 hour, one to one nursing in her own home.

On the day she was transferred, Ritchie told the BBC that she was “devastated” and wanted to get back to her own home.

Chief nursing officer Allison Cannon said NHS Sussex’s “absolute priority is to ensure that Lucinda is able to receive safe, high quality, care that meets her health needs”.

NHS Sussex had “actively worked with the health professionals in hospital, Lucinda, her family, and her representatives to consider how she could be safely supported to leave hospital”, according to Cannon.

She said it was “not clinically safe for Lucinda to go home straight away, but we are meeting with all partners every week to work to support a safe discharge to her home”.

Milne told the Commons that “against her express wishes”, Ritchie had been moved into a nursing home an hour away from her family and “denied the right to return”.

He asked Richards to work with government departments “to ensure that people’s basic human rights are protected when it comes to medical decision making”.

Richards said: “The practicalities of that case are for colleagues in at the Department of Health and Social Care, but he’s absolutely right to say that human rights in a health setting are incredibly important.”

The department was contacted for comment.