Staff ill-equipped for ‘challenging environment’

CASE FOR THE DEFENCE Gearoid Geraghty and Conall McCarthy, BL for the defendants, arriving at Castlebar District Court last week. Pic: Conor McKeown

Court heard of legal cases taken by injured staff at Áras Attracta

Edwin McGreal

Trials against five workers at Áras Attracta in Swinford have revealed that some staff working in one of the facility’s units, Bungalow Three, did not have the qualifications to deal with working in such a ‘challenging environment’.
A HSE-run facility, Áras Attracta is a residential respite and day service for adults with an intellectual disability.
The court heard that Bungalow Three, where secret filming was recorded by RTÉ for Prime Time Investigates, contained a number of residents who self-harmed and presented with ‘challenging behaviour’.
One nurse who worked in the Bungalow had her nose broken by a resident weeks before the RTÉ filming and described the bungalow as ‘the most stressful place I’ve ever worked’.
Harry Kenny, Acting Programme Director at Áras Attracta at the time of the filming, and Martin Maguire, Clinical Nurse Specialist, both expressed dissatisfaction with some Bungalow Three staff’s lack of experience and qualifications.
The court heard that Caoimhe Delaney, the RTÉ undercover reporter working as a care assistant, and Anna Ywunong Botsimbo (34) of 8 Low Park, Charlestown (one of the five accused), did not have a Management of Actual or Potential Aggression (MAPA) qualification.
Mr Kenny said he would have ‘strongly recommended’ that people working in environments in which challenging behaviour occurred, such as Bungalow Three, had these qualifications.  Mr Maguire said it was ‘not a good situation’ that workers like Ms Delaney and Ms Botsimbo did not have the MAPA qualification.
The court was told that a resident with challenging behaviour in Bungalow Three did not react well to unfamiliar staff. Knowing this, more-established staff in that bungalow had particular concerns about Caoimhe Delaney’s presence there when they believed she was on student placement.
The court heard an internal meeting in Áras Attracta had heard that staff were ‘terrified for the safety’ of Caoimhe Delaney, and Harry Kenny said he would not expect someone of Ms Delaney’s limited experience to be in Bungalow Three.
Martin Maguire said that ‘unfamiliar’ staff working with the resident is ‘unacceptabe to me’.
The court also heard that a number of staff members have sued the HSE over attacks by residents in Bungalow Three.
Andrew James Gallagher, the Assistant Programme Director at the time of the recordings, said that though a FETAC Level 5 qualification was ‘desirable’ for care assistants, only ‘approximately’ 50 percent of care assistants at Áras Attracta have that qualification.

Footage fallout
Nine members of staff were suspended in December 2014 after the RTÉ footage came to light, and six were prosecuted for assault. Five of them contested the charges before Castlebar District Court last week. A sixth had previously pleaded guilty to three charges of assault.
The court heard that Caoimhe Delaney had worked with an RTÉ researcher to pass on the footage on a daily basis. Footage was filmed from November 3 to 19, 2014. The hidden camera was designed to look like an air-freshener device.
The earlier part of the week’s court proceedings were taken up with preliminary evidence with regard to the gathering and filing of RTÉ’s secret filming. There it emerged that six files had been deleted and six more files were missing contrary to what RTÉ had previously said. Further irregularities emerged during the week.
Judge Mary Devins refused a defence application for a dismissal on the basis of these irregularities, stating the deleted and missing files referred to dates that were not the subject of prosecutions and accounted for ‘a very small amount of footage’ of the 190 hours of RTÉ footage before the court.
However she was very critical of how all sides – RTÉ, the Gardaí, the prosecution and the defence – had conducted matters, describing the fact that the issue of missing files only came to light during the hearing as ‘a lack of scrutiny’.
Next Friday will see Judge Devins give a date for decision for three of the trials, rule on an application that she recuse herself in a fourth trial and give a date for sentencing for a worker who has pleaded guilty to assault.
Judge Devins has adjourned the fifth trial to February to fix a date for a hearing before another judge, as she has recused herself from that case.