Pöytyä home-care staff deny charges after woman’s death

Two people connected with Pöytyä’s home-care service have denied criminal charges over the death of an 87-year-old woman found at home, Yle reported. Her 76-year-old husband was found in poor condition and taken to hospital.

At the Southwest Finland District Court, one defendant is charged with causing death through negligence and abandonment. A woman who worked as the defendant’s supervisor is charged with negligent breach of official duty. The court will issue its verdict later.

The couple were not receiving home-care services. About a week and a half before they were found, the husband called the service’s on-call number because he could not get up from a chair. Home-care workers helped him and recorded that the couple wanted an assessment of their need for services. The workers also thought the couple needed help: the woman had insulin-treated diabetes and a memory disorder, and the man had health problems.

The information was sent to a geronomist in the home-care service, who was responsible for assessing how urgently an assessment should be made and starting the process. The geronomist saw the message the following day. A home-care nurse later visited the couple’s home, but no one answered the door. The nurse also tried twice to call the husband.

The service did not contact the couple again for several days. The main defendant next tried to call the husband a week after the nurse’s visit. When staff realised they had been unable to reach the couple for more than a week, police went to the home, forced the door and found the woman dead on the floor and the man unwell. The woman was believed to have died two days earlier.

The prosecutor says the geronomist failed to arrange an assessment promptly or at least within seven days, and did not check staff records or establish the couple’s condition. The prosecutor argued that although no active act caused the death, the defendant had a legal duty to prevent it.

The main defendant says the assessment was considered non-urgent, partly because the husband had told the visiting workers that they were doing fine. The defence says the requirement was to start an assessment within seven days, not complete it, and that the defendant tried to call on the sixth working day. It also argues that the workplace had no clear procedure for what to do when someone did not answer the phone. The defendant denies abandoning the couple, and the defence says that charge would require proof of intent.

The supervisor’s charge concerns staff records written in a notebook rather than the official information system. The prosecutor says she was responsible for ensuring staff handled client information lawfully. The defence says the workplace had banned recording client information outside its systems a year earlier, and that the supervisor did not know the notebook was still being used for that purpose.

Both defendants deny the charges.