Carer jailed over lie that led to disabled woman starving to death

'One can only imagine the terror which must have overcome Julie Cleworth as she lay helpless in bed, realising that she had been abandoned and left to starve to death.'

A care worker whose neglect caused a severely disabled woman to starve to death has been jailed for three years.

Tracey Burrows, 56, was supposed to carry out a 30-minute home visit to Julie Cleworth, 43, but instead went to see her own mother instead.

She wrongly assumed Ms Cleworth had not returned from a hospital visit because there was no light coming from her living room.

Burrows rang her boss to say she had been inside the property and found no sign of Ms Cleworth.

This lie meant her employer, Unite Healthcare Ltd, cancelled Ms Cleworth’s care package because they thought she was still in hospital.

Ms Cleworth was left in her home in St Helens, Merseyside, without food, fluids and medication and was found dead four days later on February 9, 2017.

Sentencing today at Liverpool Crown Court, Judge Neil Flewitt QC told Burrows: ‘Your neglect of Julie Cleworth set in motion an unbroken sequence of events which led directly to her death.

‘I accept that you neither intended nor actually foresaw the consequences of your actions.

‘However, if you had stopped to think about what you were doing, instead of neglecting your duty and going instead to visit your mother, you would have realised that your actions might lead to Julie Cleworth’s death.’

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Expert evidence given at her trial last month said Ms Cleworth could have suffered with abdominal pain, vomiting, profound loss of energy, confusion, deranged conscious level and eventually coma.

Judge Flewitt said: ‘One can only imagine the terror which must have overcome Julie Cleworth as she lay helpless in bed, realising that she had been abandoned and left to starve to death.’

Burrows, of, St Helens, had denied manslaughter by gross negligence, but a jury found her guilty.

In 2013, Ms Cleworth – who weighed 18 and a half stones and was classified as morbidly obese – suffered a stroke which left her completely immobile.

She became totally reliant on care workers for her basic needs and required five visits per day to her home.

A week before her death she was admitted to Whiston Hospital with suspected deep vein thrombosis but was discharged three days later.

Ordinarily Ms Cleworth spent all her time and slept on the sofa in the living room at the front of her home.

But the ambulance crew did not have the equipment to move her there so put her on an electric bed in a room at the back of the house, the court heard.

Burrows, who had been a regular carer for Ms Cleworth, wrongly assumed she was not home from hospital because there was no light coming from the front living room.

She did return to the home later the same evening, but did not even get out of her car to check.

Judge Flewitt said privately owned Unite Healthcare arguably should have made further inquiries to establish where Ms Cleworth was.

But the defendant’s neglect of duty and subsequent lie was the ‘catalyst’ for what followed.

Burrows had worked for Unite Healthcare since 2013, despite being convicted of benefit fraud in March 2014 and receiving a 12-month jail term, suspended for the same period.

Nigel Power QC, defending, said the manslaughter offence was a lapse from the otherwise exemplary care the mother-of-three provided to all her patients.

He said his client’s ‘eclectic’ range of character references showed her to be ‘utterly selfless in almost every aspect of her life’.

Mr Power said she had expressed remorse and shame, but Judge Flewitt said he found those sentiments ‘difficult to reconcile’ with her assertion to the jury that she did not bare any responsibility for Ms Cleworth’s death.

Referring to Burrow’s pay of £7.20 per hour – the national minimum wage – the judge added: ‘It is surprising that as a society we expect people to provide the level of care that Ms Burrows was providing for that hourly rate.

‘For each of those half-hour visits she made she was required to perform tasks that I suspect a lot of people would find very difficult.’

But he said this was irrelevant to the offence she committed as it was a job she had agreed to do.

After the sentencing, Merseyside Police’s Detective Inspector Craig Turner said: ‘Tracey was in a position of care and has abused this trust, ultimately resulting in the sad passing of Ms Cleworth.

‘Although this is a really awful series of events, I hope this sentencing brings some closure to Ms Cleworth’s family and allows them to move on with their own lives.’