What happened
Lorraine Morgan, 42, a mother of three from Bridgend, was supporting a woman with learning difficulties in sheltered housing for her employer Cartrefi Cymru. She was working with a male colleague when she enforced a no-smoking rule.
The patient, who had a history of assaulting nursing staff, set on her from behind and began beating and throttling her. Morgan forced her out of the room, locked the door and rang her bosses. The manager on duty told her to stay in the room until morning. Her colleague, who had not been trained in restraint, was told to go home.
The patient kept trying to break in, kicking and barging the door until the lock came off. Morgan wedged her back against it and held it shut all night, with no toilet facilities. At the 7am handover she opened the door to the colleague taking over, and the patient attacked her a second time until someone restrained her.
The outcome
With UNISON behind her, Morgan won an out-of-court compensation settlement against Cartrefi Cymru, the largest provider of home-based learning-disability services in Wales. No prosecution of the employer is recorded.
UNISON general secretary Dave Prentis said the company’s negligence “knew no bounds”. Morgan was off work for seven weeks and went back only after being told she could be sacked while on sick leave. She struggled on for a year, then gave up her career.
What went wrong
Two failures stacked on one night shift. The first was information: the patient’s history of violence had not been passed to the worker who was alone with her. The second was the instruction. “Lock the door and stay put” moved a worker from a room she could leave into a room she had to defend, and it came from a manager, not from the patient.
Nothing in the response was physical until the morning, and nobody came. A colleague with no restraint training was sent home instead of kept as a second pair of hands.
What it teaches
A lone worker needs two things the employer controls: what is known about the person they are supporting, and the standing to refuse an instruction that makes them less safe.
“Stay put until morning” is not a plan. It has no endpoint, no backup and no review. Nine hours behind a door that had already lost its lock is a decision to leave one person alone with the risk.
Questions for the room
- When your manager tells you to stay in a room and wait, do you have the standing to say no? What would you say?
- Before a night shift, can you name every service user on your caseload with a history of violence? If not, who do you ask?
- A colleague has been attacked and the door is holding. Who is your second responder, and how fast can they get there?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: confirmed. The Mirror report of 31 May 2011 was read in full and checked live on 20 October 2026. It carries the 2006 attack, the nine hours behind the door, the lock coming off and the second attack at handover. That her male colleague was untrained and sent home is in the pack but not the report, so it is less firm. The pack files the case under 2011; the Mirror and the record date the attack to 2006, so no shift date is printed. The manager on duty is named in the record but was not convicted, so she is not named here. The report spells the name “Loraine” and “Lorraine”; the record’s spelling is used.
A night rota with one worker and one untrained colleague is a staffing decision, and our lone working training covers how to test it before the shift starts.
Sources
- Mirror, 31 May 2011 · https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/care-workers-night-of-terror-at-hands-131731
Reviewed 20 October 2026.