What happened
On 17 August 2019 Belinda Rose, 62, a support worker from Walsall, went to a supported living home in Perry Barr, Birmingham, to meet Inderjit Ram, 52. Ram ran a company providing residential support to vulnerable adults. He had asked to borrow thousands of pounds from her.
In the meeting he stabbed her in the torso with a kitchen knife. He left her on a sofa and handed himself in to police shortly afterwards.
The court heard that Ram had acted normally in the hours before the attack, and that his family had booked a doctor’s appointment because they were worried about his welfare.
The outcome
Ram, who also worked as a supply teacher and had a depressive disorder, admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. On 29 June 2020 at Birmingham Crown Court, Judge Melbourne Inman QC jailed him for 10 years with a further five years on extended licence.
The judge called the killing “a savage and brutal attack” that came “out of nowhere”, “a sudden explosion of catastrophic violence over an unremarkable disagreement”. He said Ram was in “significant financial difficulties with his properties” and that “exactly what happened at the house when you met Belinda is not known”. By the time Ram spoke to psychiatrists he had no recollection of it.
The British Association of Social Workers said her death highlighted “the daily risks” faced by care staff. According to GMB and HSE data cited by the association, UK care workers had suffered more than 6,000 violent attacks resulting in serious injury.
What went wrong
Rose was alone in the house with the man who killed her, and the business of the meeting was money.
That shift is the part an employer can act on. A request to borrow thousands of pounds from a member of staff is not a work conversation. It makes the worker a lender to the man who runs the building.
Nothing in the record describes a second person at that meeting, a check-in during it, or a rule about staff lending money to contractors. The risk picture for the visit was the service, and the man in the room was not the service.
What it teaches
Lone visit planning usually asks who the service user is. This case asks who else will be in the room. Contractors, managers, family members and other residents all change the risk.
A request that changes what a meeting is for is a warning, not a favour. Staff need a rule they can quote when a provider asks for money, and a way to end a visit that has turned into something else. The cheapest version is one line in the visit procedure.
Questions for the room
- Before a visit, who did you expect to be in that house, and did the plan name them?
- A contractor asks to borrow money. What is your script, and who do you tell afterwards?
- If a colleague said they were meeting a provider alone to discuss a loan, what would you do with that?
- What is your exit from a room where the conversation has left the work?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: confirmed. Three independent sources were read in full: BBC News, the BASW statement and Community Care. Community Care gives her age as 63, the BBC and the record give 62, and this page follows the BBC. No employer was prosecuted, no inquest finding is on the record, and the account of what happened in the room rests on Ram’s plea and the judge’s remarks rather than on any witness.
Our lone working training covers planning a visit around everyone who will be in the building.
Sources
- BBC News, 2020 · https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-53223704
- British Association of Social Workers, 2019 · https://basw.co.uk/articles/basw-statement-tragic-death-social-care-professional
- Community Care, 2019 · https://www.communitycare.co.uk/content/news/woman-killed-in-birmingham-was-social-care-worker-carrying-out-home-visits-reports-say
Reviewed 20 October 2026.