Care home fraudsters faked 85-year-old resident’s £175k will in attempt to get hold of fortune

Graham Walker, 74 and Lyn Walker, 71, of Ribberford Close, Halesowen and Slaney-Summers, 65, of Raven Hays Road, Birmingham, were found guilty by a jury at Wolverhampton Crown Court of fraud.

Slaney-Summers was also found guilty of theft.

The court heard how the pensioner’s last will and testament was a "sham" with different handwriting and coloured pens used throughout.

Prosecutors said the new will named Lyn Walker and Slaney-Summers as executors.

Between them, they stood to benefit to the tune of around £175,000 from the plans laid out in the will.

An investigation was launched by the trading standards team on Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council after Ms Barnsley’s only surviving relative, her cousin Verna, made a complaint.

Cabinet member responsible for trading standards Councillor Phil Atkins said: "I welcome the decision of the jury, which brings to an end a long and painstaking investigation by our superb trading standards team to bring these three people to justice.

"Their intentions were clear, to fleece this poor, vulnerable woman of all the money she had worked her whole life to earn.

"It was an horrific abuse of trust by three people who she was relying on to look after her best interests.

"Instead they financially abused her and would have taken everything she had but for the dogged determination of her cousin and our trading standards team.

"This case is a warning that as a council we will not tolerate elder abuse."

The investigation also uncovered that Slaney-Summers stole around £6,000 by making withdrawals from Ms Barnsley’s bank account using her card.

The trio will be sentenced on December 5.

It comes as a new report from the Nuffield Trust think tank said one in four district nurses left the workforce in the year to September last year, despite rising demand for care in people’s homes, community settings and care homes.

District nurses are expected to cover every region in England, and services mostly run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The new report pointed to a 43 per cent fall in the number of full-time-equivalent NHS district nurses between 2009 and 2024.

Over the same period, there was an estimated 24 per cent increase in the need for district nursing due to the increasing and ageing population.

At current rates, demand will increase further, by 34 per cent in the next 15 years.

Overall, there were 2.8 million fewer recorded district nursing contacts in 2023/24 (29.2 million) than in 2009/10 (32 million).

The new report also said a rising proportion of staff working in district nursing services are not nurses.

The proportion of staff employed in other roles, including as healthcare assistants, has risen from 18 per cent in 2009 to 28 per cent in 2024.

There are particularly low proportions of nurses in some NHS regions, including the South East.

The report added: "As well as supporting the shift towards more person-centred, preventative care closer to home, district nursing services have the potential to save the NHS money.

"The estimated mean average cost to the NHS of a face-to-face district nurse visit, at £57, is half that of an accident and emergency attendance and around a 40th of the cost of an average emergency short-term hospital admission."