‘Volatile’: Legal battle erupts over elderly man accused of serious nursing home violence

An 80-year-old Tasmanian man has been accused of bashing his fellow nursing home residents, including inflicting a fatal injury upon an elderly woman. What a tribunal heard>

An elderly man has been accused of repeatedly hitting, shaking and pushing over nursing home residents and responding violently to staff.

A legal battle has broken out with an 80-year-old man accused of bashing other elderly nursing home residents, including a woman said to have died from an injury he inflicted.

The “volatile” man, whose name has not been released, has been accused by the aged care home of a list of attacks including pushing a woman, who died from a fracture sustained in her fall.

According to a newly-published Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal decision, he has been accused of daily aggression, attacking staff whenever personal care was attempted.

His list of nine alleged attacks from January to April this year include shaking and pushing over residents, putting his hands around a resident’s neck, biting and bending the arm and fingers of a visiting dentist, pushing a resident into shrubbery, and pushing a resident until she fell and hit her head on a concrete outdoor walkway.

However, his history dates back to 2022, when he allegedly pushed residents and staff, tried to choke someone and threatened someone with a knife.

The nursing home has made an application for an emergency guardianship order because his behaviour was “at a point where he is no longer safe to other residents”.

The home told the tribunal it had attempted on numerous occasions to seek consent from the man’s son to assess him for the federal government’s Specialist Dementia Care Program or Dementia Support Australia’s Severe Behaviour Response Team, which provide help for severe dementia cases or assist in transitioning people to Hobart’s geriatric, psychiatric facility Roy Fagan.

The Roy Fagan Centre. Picture: Google Images

However, it said the son had only given partial consent and the man had not been fully assessed – meaning he was currently placed in a residential care setting, which was unsuitable.

The tribunal heard the elderly man’s behaviours had become increasingly frequent, sparking a “fear culture” among other residents.

It also heard the man had been assessed as suitable for Roy Fagan a year ago, but that his son refused the move on the day of the transfer.

The nursing home also said it had not put the man in an ambulance and sent him to hospital, which is what they had been advised to do when there was an incident, and was trying its hardest to provide support on-site.

Dismissing the nursing home’s application, tribunal member Virginia Jones said she needed to be satisfied that “urgent circumstances” existed to justify the making of an emergency guardianship order.

She said evidence of the man’s behaviour dated back to 2022, so was “not new”, and noted Dementia Support Australia had provided a report in January this year with a list of recommendations and strategies.

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