Labour Councillor’s John and Betty Hewitt and Hull City Council have refused
to comment on their continuing membership on the Health and Social Well-being
Overview and Scrutiny Commission. This came after the conviction of the duo’s
son and daughter on March 21st 2005 of the ill-treatment of vulnerable adults
at a care home run by the council in the City.
Jurors at Hull Crown Court heard how John Edward Hewitt, aged 28, had rubbed Michael Bell’s face in his own urine after he wet himself, screamed at him and left him crying on the floor. His sister, Jacqueline Hewitt, aged 29 and living at home with her parents, was reported to have nipped and pulled the hair of 37 year old Josephine Barnett.
John Edward and Jacqueline Hewitt, along with five other workers at the care home also found guilty of various charges of ill-treatment and neglect, were both sent to prison for 12 months after the judge Roger Thorn QC branded them the ‘ringleaders’ of what he described as “persistent and endemic abuse by carers who appeared to know no shame.”
The Scrutiny Commission on which the Longhill Ward councillor’s sit is responsible for scrutinising ‘the provision, planning and management of social and healthcare, children’s, elderly persons and mental welfare services in Kingston upon Hull’ and as such is directly responsible for ensuring that vulnerable adults in homes such as Bede’s View are properly cared for.
Councillor’s Betty and John Hewitt have failed to reply to questions asking them whether their positions on the Scrutiny Commission are now untenable. Neither are they willing to make a statement expressing their regret at the sufferings residents endured at the hands of their children and other workers at Bede’s View. And in a statement issued by the Council’s Press Office there is also no expression of regret.
Meanwhile Hull City Council press officer Sarah Hesslewood’s statement that she had “asked the councillors to respond” to a series of written questions and expected to be able to give a reply “within a week” was ten days later replaced with a request to know who this article was to be circulated to before she could give any answers.
As such we will never know whether the council agrees with the question that it is nothing short of a disgrace that fellow Longhill Councillor John Black, in his role as manager, hired Jacqueline Hewitt to work at the Hull Resettlement Project in the City, after she left Bede’s View and was awaiting trial. Or indeed whether Hull City Council is confident that it would be able to prevent similar incidents of abuse in other care homes in the future. Which is worrying news for the residents of Hull and especially those living in care in the City.
See for further information:-
Details of Membership of
Membership and Social Well-being Overview and Scrutiny Commission see
http://www.hullcc.gov.uk/committees/health_social_well-being_overview.php
Five and a Half Years for
the Carers who knew no shame
http://www.thisishull.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=136536&command=displayCont
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