Hi all
An update to this thread.
There was a Coroner's inquest for my dad where I got a reasonable explanation in respect of dad's injuries, particularly the bleed on the brain and the existing condition of his brain that exacerbated the bleed. Even the Coroner said that the PM report was complicated and he spent quite a lot of time explaining this. The full extent of dad's injuries were not fully explained but they could have been as a result of a "suspected" fall a few days earlier. Indeed the trigger for the fall could have been anything but nevertheless, he wasn't supervised at the time so no-one really knows. Because the inquest does not apportion blame and there was no evidence of criminal activity, it was always going to be accidental death. I did get what I wanted, which was a reasonable explanation of the circumstances surrounding his death. It appears that the carer was attending to another resident when my dad went wandering and fell. He was given sedatives a couple of hours earlier.
The Safeguarding report found that, and I quote: "abuse of neglect was partially substantiated" on the basis that they hadn't adequately assessed the risk of falling, particularly when they started giving him sedatives. There were some mitigation comments, but these were quite woolly. The Coroner went into this quite a bit and the care home have already changed their internal procedures to help prevent it from happening again, so this is good. Whether it would have changed anything had he been risk assessed correctly is open for debate but he would have been kept an eye on more closely at very least. The general care dad was given was good (in my opinion) but in this respect, I feel that the level of care was very substandard.
Regards
Dave