What happened
The resident had lived at Claremont House, a Priory Adult Care home in West Yorkshire, for some months. She was in her eighties, frail with reduced mobility, had dementia and psychosis, was partially blind, and spoke Italian first. She used a walking frame to reach her bathroom, and needed two staff and calm explanations.
On the night of 30 November 2018, Mamello Patience Herring, a mental health nurse at the home since July 2014, and a care assistant were filmed in the resident’s bedroom by a covert camera her family had installed.
The footage shows them dragging her across the bedroom floor, about two to three metres, partly undressed, then lifting her by the arms onto the bed. Her distress can be heard on the audio.
The safeguarding team told the home on 5 December 2018 that a complaint had been made; the manager referred Herring to the Nursing and Midwifery Council on 14 December.
The outcome
Herring was convicted on 20 August 2019 at Bradford Crown Court of care worker ill-treatment or wilful neglect of an individual, under section 20 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015.
She was sentenced on 22 January 2021 to an 18 month community order, 250 hours of unpaid work and an £85 surcharge. The judge called the behaviour “grossly negligent” rather than deliberate.
At a substantive hearing on 26 January 2022 an NMC panel accepted a consensual panel determination, found the conviction proved and fitness to practise impaired, and struck her off, with an 18 month interim suspension order.
What went wrong
The judge’s remarks put the failure in minutes. It would have taken minutes to talk the resident down, explain, let her use the toilet as she wanted, walk with her on the frame and lift her properly. Instead, he said, she was rushed through and “treated like an object”.
The panel’s concern was not only the handling. It looked at the account given for it, that stress, tiredness and a busy shift explained the decisions, and treated that as a failure of accountability.
Herring admitted the conviction and the impairment, so the facts were never separately litigated. The establishing record is the conviction, not findings about what she intended.
What it teaches
Moving a person with dementia is a timed, talked-through procedure, not a lift. On a night shift where other residents are calling, the temptation is real, and the answer is staffing and a plan, not a quicker drag.
Supervision is what catches this. Here the camera was installed by the family. A home that learns about its night shifts only from a family’s footage has no supervision worth the name.
Questions for the room
- The judge said the proper course would have taken minutes. What in a night shift makes those minutes feel unavailable, and who owns that?
- You are behind schedule with two residents calling. What do you do in the next two minutes?
- The camera was installed by the family, not the home. What would have caught this without it?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: confirmed. The NMC determination sets out the charge, the admitted facts and the sanction, and an independent trade press report describes the footage and the conviction. The determination as fetched stops partway through the impairment reasoning, so the panel’s analysis rests on its recorded conclusion, not the full text. The sentencing remarks were read as quoted in the determination.
The record gives the resident’s age as 85; the précis gives no age, so this page says she was in her eighties. She is not named.
Herring is named because she was convicted, and the conviction is the finding. Proceedings concluded on 26 January 2022.
Our physical interventions training covers moving and holding people with dementia, and the talking that has to come first.
Sources
Reviewed 20 October 2026.