‘As a professional nurse your role was primarily to support and nurse her in her recovery and keep her safe. But your greatest failure was to oversee the negligent nursing care on a ward that ultimately destroyed my daughter.’
The manager of a NHS ward where a patient took her own life has been spared jail, while the NHS has been fined more than £500,000, writes local democracy reporter Sebastian Mann.
Benjamin Aninakwa and the North East London Foundation Trust (NELFT) were sentenced today (11th November) at the Old Bailey, bringing an end to a lengthy trial over the death of Alice Figueiredo.
Alice, 22, died during her stay in the Hepworth ward in Goodmayes Hospital in July 2015, having been able to access plastic bin-liners, mainly from a shared toilet. Her fatal attempt to self-harm was the 19th such incident, the court heard.
Aninakwa, ward manager when Alice died, was handed a six-month prison sentence, suspended for twelve months. He will also need to complete 300 hours of unpaid work within the next year.
NELFT was ordered to pay £565,000 over two years, alongside £200,000 in prosecution costs.
In a statement, the trust said it had made a string of changes in the decade since, including enhancing risk assessment and management procedures, which all inpatient staff have received “comprehensive” training in.
“We have also prioritised a fundamental shift in ward culture, placing the person at the centre of our care delivery and working to build stronger partnerships between our clinical teams, patients and their families,” a spokesperson said.
He added: “The trust is fully committed to sustaining and building upon these improvements. We remain dedicated to ensuring that Alice’s memory continues to inspire positive change within our organisation, and we will continue to work tirelessly to deliver safer, more compassionate care for the communities we serve.”
In June, a jury found that NELFT and Aninakwa did not do enough to prevent her death under the Health and Safety at Work Act.
Aninakwa was cleared of the more serious charge of gross negligence manslaughter, while the trust was cleared of a second, more serious charge of corporate manslaughter.
Sentencing the ward manager, Judge Richard Marks KC, the Common Serjeant of London, said Aninakwa had tried to “minimise his responsibility” and would have been aware of Alice as the only patient showing suicidal tendencies on the ward.
Aninakwa “failed to take any steps” to address the “grave concerns” raised by Alice’s mother, Jane Figueiredo, and should have treated access to plastic bags – around which Alice felt “unsafe” – as an “absolute priority”.
Judge Marks said Aninakwa “continued to assert [he] did not do anything wrong” and, while he “regretted Alice’s death,” had “no real insight into or any real remorse for what you did, or perhaps more pertinently, what you failed to do”.
It is understood he is appealing his conviction, the BBC reports.
The trial, which began in October last year, was the first time an NHS trust had been charged in relation to a patient taking their own life, and only the second time a trust had faced corporate manslaughter charges.
Jurors in the Central Criminal Court deliberated for a total of 24 days – the joint-longest deliberation in UK legal history – to reach their verdicts.
Ahead of the sentencing, members of her family spoke about the “wonderful and inspiring” person Alice – head girl at school, a flautist and a member of Youth Parliament – had been.
“Alice, your all-too-short life was dynamic, beautiful and unique,” Jane said.
“You left an unforgettable impression on people’s hearts wherever you went. For us you were, are and always will be precious, honoured and loved.”
Eleanor Masters, her older sister and one of Jane’s three daughters, said her life had been “cleaved in two” by Alice’s death. She called the middle child her best friend and “comrade in arms,” likening her death to the loss of a limb.
The court also heard how the “long, arduous” trial had been a “retraumatising” experience for the family.
Eleanor added that her children, infants when Alice died, now “only know Auntie Alice as a name, an idea – someone who has always been absent”.
Due to the emotional toll of Alice’s death, she said she didn’t feel that her own children “had ever really met the person I was”.
Her stepfather Max argued that medical evidence presented to the court by defence barristers gave the impression Alice was “a hopeless case”, a claim he said was “simply untrue”.
He also criticised NELFT’s comments following the verdict, saying the trust had “nearly ten years to reflect” and “make a full unreserved apology to the family,” but this “never happened”.
Speaking directly to Aninakwa, Max, who knew Alice her entire life, said: “As a professional nurse your role was primarily to support and nurse her in her recovery and keep her safe. But your greatest failure was to oversee the negligent nursing care on a ward that ultimately destroyed my daughter.
“I have been broken by what you have done to our family. You took away a beautiful soul from us.”
In the wake of the sentencing, a spokesperson for NELFT said: “Our thoughts remain with Alice’s family and all those close to her, both today and throughout the decade since her death.”
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