Woman, 74, and son lay rotting in Dubbo home for months, inquest told

Mystery still surrounds the grim discovery of two bodies that were found rotting and decomposed in a home in regional NSW.

Home care nurses stopped attending to treat an elderly, bed-bound woman in regional NSW without notifying her in September 2015, an inquest has been told.

Six months later the 74-year-old was found dead, rotting in soiled sheets. The body of her son, 54, was also found in the home strewn with alcohol bottles.

They were both so severely decomposed it was impossible to determine exactly how or when they died following the horror discovery on March, 9, 2016.

Neither person can be identified due to legal reasons.

The had woman lived with her son in Dubbo, but local health authorities became so concerned for her welfare they applied for her to be appointed a public guardian.

That application was successful yet during the three-month guardianship no one ever visited the woman, the inquest into her death has been told.

The woman was living in a ‘dirty’ home, the inquest was told. Picture: iStock

Phone records show the last calls made from the house came on February 16, 2016 to a Chinese restaurant and a taxi company.

Lidcombe Coroners Court was told on Monday that the woman’s community care program with the Lourdes Hospital was discontinued on September 18, 2015 after it was concluded she was refusing treatment.

The inquest heard the woman made a voodoo doll of a senior nurse after she made the application for a guardian to be appointed in early September.

Nurses had been attending her house to tend to a wound but on several occasions they were denied entry, either by her son or when no one answered the door.

Witness Carole Neill, who at the time worked in aged care assessment at Lourdes Hospital, told the inquest that she visited the “dirty” home in early August and believed the woman was “at risk”.

The woman did not want to go to hospital and her son said they were OK: “They weren’t,” Ms Neill said.

The inquest was told that Ms Neill devised a plan with a contact for an ambulance to pick the woman up and take her to Dubbo Base Hospital before she would be put into free respite.

The woman and son said they would sleep on the offer but when Ms Neill called the next day – finally connecting after several tries – they said no.

“The lady was very clear in what she wanted,” Ms Neill said. “(The son) was very keen to say all was going OK.”

The woman refused to be taken to Dubbo Base Hospital.

Stephen Evans, the former health services manager for Lourdes Hospital, told the inquest that accessing the woman became increasingly difficult in the final weeks of her treatment.

Staff were concerned about her son’s ability to provide care as well as the safety of nurses attending the home described as being in “squalor”. They came in pairs both for protective and nursing reasons.

Mr Evans said he visited the woman on September 4 to serve her with an application for public guardianship.

She did not react well, he said, telling nurse unit manager Kaylene Green to “get out and never come back”.

“I think she was quite angry and she said it quite directly,” he said.

The inquest heard both the woman and her son were drinking alcohol and there were concerns that impacted on their capacity to make decisions regarding the elderly patient’s health.

Mr Evans said when nurses attended to check the woman’s wound on September 17 her son told them to come back the next day through a gap in the door.

They did so but this time got no response.

“I guess when do you stop is the question,” he said.

“The problem we had was access to the home. That was very difficult on many occasions. If we visited every day I don’t know if that would have made any difference.”

The inquest is being held at the NSW Coroners Court in Lidcombe, Sydney. Picture: NCA NewsWire /Gaye Gerard

At a following meeting it was decided the woman would be discharged from the community nursing program, but there was no policy in place requiring that information to be relayed to her, Mr Evans said.

He said the woman’s wound had healed and staff were stretched in keeping up with the rest of their patients.

Counsel assisting the coroner Elizabeth Raper SC put to him that the woman had never made a formal request for treatment to stop, to which he agreed.

She asked if he agreed in hindsight if the health service should have contacted police to perform a welfare check on the woman.

“I guess on the 18th we could have asked the police to attend seeing as they didn’t answer the door,” he said.

Ms Green said she believed her staff had tried its best to care for the woman but were left helpless because a lack of cooperation.

“Our limited resources meant that we couldn’t keep going to someone who was refusing our care,” she said.

Ms Green said the woman’s son became “agitated” at the health service’s interventions and she hoped the public guardian would use its powers to overcome their family’s reluctance to accept treatment.

After an acrimonious meeting at the home on September 4, she was told by staff the woman had made a voodoo doll of her and was warned not to go back to the home.

Earlier, Mr Evans said he was surprised the woman’s guardianship ordered in October 2015 was not extended at a hearing in January 2016 after only three months, as no one had contacted or visited her.

However, the inquest was told the nursing service did not notify the guardian it had stopped treatment.

The inquest continues.