A care worker who mistreated three mental health patients at a residential unit in Templepatrick, County Antrim, will not be sent to jail.<\/p>\n
Tracey Balantine, 29, of Garden Village, Antrim, was convicted last May of the ill-treatment or wilful neglect of a man and two women at the Broadacres residential unit.<\/p>\n
The offences were committed between 31 December 2016 and 22 May 2017.<\/p>\n
She was also convicted of assaulting the male patient. <\/p>\n
In court on Tuesday, Balantine’s six month prison sentence was reduced on appeal. <\/p>\n
A judge, sitting at Antrim County Court, sentenced her to 100 hours of community service and imposed a three-year probation order. <\/p>\n
At the hearing, a prosecution lawyer read out evidence submitted by Balantine’s colleagues at her original contest. <\/p>\n
He said that on one occasion Balantine set a man in a room alone strapped into a wheelchair, with blankets around the foot of the chair which left marks, while the handles of the wheelchair were wedged into the bed bars. <\/p>\n
Another time a colleague saw Balantine putting her hands on a patient’s shoulders before pushing her to the floor while using an expletive. <\/p>\n
The court heard that on one occasion Balantine came behind a patient who was walking down a hallway using handrails and put her knees into the back of his knees, causing him to fall, before telling him to get up, again, using an expletive. <\/p>\n
The prosecution lawyer told the court that staff at the residential unit cared for adults with “complex learning difficulties”.<\/p>\n
The lawyer said the injured patients could not communicate or give evidence. <\/p>\n
He said concerns about Balantine’s behaviour were raised by staff working on individual shifts with her.<\/p>\n
They had not realised this was a “common occurrence”. <\/p>\n
Balantine is currently suspended from practising as a carer with an interim order in place pending the outcome of the sentence appeal. <\/p>\n
The judge told her she had behaved in a “reprehensible manner” and was “convicted of some of the most serious crimes that can be committed by someone entrusted with the care of the vulnerable.”<\/p>\n
“It is the hope and expectation of the court that you will never again be put into a position of responsibility over the vulnerable,” he said.<\/p>\n
Allowing the appeal, the judge said that if he were to affirm the six month sentence handed down by the lower court it would “effectively mean three months in custody.” <\/p>\n
He said while this would undoubtedly be a “harrowing experience” and provide “some “form of retribution” it would not address the underlying causes of Balantine’s behaviour. <\/p>\n
She was ordered to pay \u00a31,000 to each of her victims. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A care worker who mistreated three mental health patients at a residential unit in Templepatrick, County Antrim, will not be sent to jail. Tracey Balantine, 29, of Garden Village, Antrim, was convicted last May of the ill-treatment or wilful neglect of a man and two women at the Broadacres residential unit. The offences were committed Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-233796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233796\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}