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Published: 10 June, 2010
by TOM FOOT

CALLS for a public inquiry into the treatment of a disabled woman found dead in her council flat after years of distress have grown louder after a coroner’s inquest closed with a series of key questions left unanswered.

St Pancras coroner Dr Andrew Reid said he could not ascertain what killed Jennyfer Spencer, 46, the woman ­confined to a wheelchair who left behind a note to the New Journal in her Gospel Oak home pleading for her disagreements with the council’s housing and social services teams to be investigated. She lay dead, undiscovered, in the flat for two weeks.

But the nature of the inquest hearing on Thursday – a probe to establish the circumstances of her death in February, not the standard of help she received from the Town Hall – did not fully explore her long battle for a more suitable ground-floor flat. 

Whether care services failed or not, the New Journal now joins campaigners who say the best way to learn lessons from her case and to answer the questions left shrouded in mystery by the inquest is a public inquiry.

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FAMILY and friends of a severely disabled woman may never know how she died after an inquest into her death drew a blank.

St Pancras Coroner Andrew Reid said at a hearing on Thursday the cause of Jennyfer Spencer’s death was “unascertained” due to the condition her body was found in. 

The 46-year-old, who was confined to a wheelchair, was found dead in her fifth-floor flat – which had not been adapted for a disabled person – in the Waxham estate in Gospel Oak on March 1.

The court heard how Ms Spencer had died up to two weeks before her body was found by police on the floor of her council home.

Dr Reid said: “The cause of death cannot be ascertained due to decomposition and it was not possible to test specimens. The autopsy was unascertainable. She had been dead some time before the body was found. The examination in March 4 found no marks of violence. Her organs were unremarkable and showed no signs of natural disease.”

Ms Spencer, known locally as Alex, had suffered three brain haemorrhages around 2001 and had a history of blood pressure, vertigo, dizziness and blackouts.

The severity of her disability meant she was allocated a social worker and entitled to a high level of council care benefits.

The inquest was told how social workers at the Peckwater Centre became “perplexed” by Ms Spencer’s behaviour in 2008 after she did not attend a meeting about a reassessment of her care package.

The team believed it was possible Ms Spencer was not spending her direct care payments – a cash allowance paid into a special bank account to pay for private carers – and had thousands of pounds in the bank.

Ray Conroy, a team leader at the Physical Disability and Brain Injury Team in the Peckwater Centre, Kentish Town, said: “We had discussions about why she wasn’t using the money we assessed her for. We offered her agency carers – three visits a day. There were numerous attempts to engage with her legal representatives, her advocate and her.

“Unfortunately we were not able to meet with her. The last meeting was in August 2008.

“We had concerns she was contacting us saying we wouldn’t meet with her, when we were. We tried her by phone and by letter. We were concerned it might be a mental health issue. We had no powers to enforce engagement.”

The team referred Ms Spencer for a psychiatric assessment but she did not attend.

The court head how her doctor, Richard Garlick, from the James Wigg Practice in Kentish Town, warned against any attempts to section Ms Spencer under the Mental Health Act as she “was not suffering mental health problems”. Mr Garlick did not give evidence in court.

Despite Ms Spencer raising concerns that she would suffer as a result, the care team arranged for her payments to be replaced by a system where agency carers would be sent to her home. They visited three times a day throughout May 2008 but the carers were “refused” entry, or she did not answer, Mr Conroy told the coroner.

“The cut-off point was a difficult area for us,” he added. 

“We had to make a decision how far to push her to accept services she didn’t want to accept. Her human rights have to be considered.”

Mr Conroy, who has worked in care services since 1992, said: “It is the first instance I have known where services have been withdrawn and the person still hasn’t engaged with us.”

The court heard how Ms Spencer came to social workers’ offices in the Peckwater Centre on February 22 to collect a new wheelchair she had been waiting for. It was the last time she was seen alive.

Her sister Yvonne Chunda said: “She loved life. But she changed after her illness. 

“She was supposed to be moved out of her home. But she couldn’t live in the places they wanted to give her. She mainly wanted to stay in the area she was in – she knew everyone there.”

Following a medical assessment in 2003, Camden Council was instructed to find Ms Spencer a two-bedroom flat with wheelchair access and adaptations. The fifth-floor flat in Waxham, where she lived for seven years in a wheelchair until her death, had no adaptations, was one-bedroom, and had a step outside the entrance.

Following clarification from Camden Council’s solicitor, who was invited by the coroner to interview witnesses during the hearing, the court heard Ms Spencer had refused five offers of a transfer from her home between 2004 and 2007. 

She refused because they were too small or because – on one occasions – another tenant was allocated the flat ahead of her. 

Dr Reid asked Julie Newsam, allocations manager at Camden Council, why no offers were made for three years after 2007.

She said: “It could have been because of a lack of suitable properties. We kept looking.”

Ms Newsam agreed it was likely that two-bedroom wheelchair access properties in Gospel Oak were let to other tenants in similar needs during this three-year period but rejected that Ms Spencer had been “penalised” for refusing earlier offers.

She agreed that two of the offers were “quite far” from her home in Gospel Oak.

PC Andrew Knight told the court: “We attended the scene to reports of a leak from the flat below and a resident who was concerned about this lady. Entry was forced. I would describe Ms Spencer as a horder. The postbox was overflowing. It was cluttered.”

He added: “The TV was on. The bath was overflowing due to clothing and tissue blocking the pipe.”

He said police are still investigating potential “criminal activity” over a series of cheques cashed after her death.

No suicide note or empty packets of medication were found during the police search and the coroner ruled out suicide.

Dr Reid said: “On the balance of probabilities, she had capacity and I cannot reach a conclusion of self-neglect. Equally, I can find no was gross lack of attention by any agency. There is no evidence of neglect by the local authority or care ser­vices.”

Outside the court, Ms Chunda said: “There are still a lot of unanswered questions. We felt we were never going to get anywhere with this. It is time to move on.”

Her mother, Sylvia, said: “I don’t know what to say about that – all I remember is the smiles she greeted every person with.”

CNJ COMMENT – Only a full inquiry will reveal facts behind tragedy – and prevent another one

QUESTIONS, unfortunately, remain unanswered after the inquest held into the tragic death of Jennyfer Spencer.

The coroner, Andrew Reid, was, principally, required only to reach a conclusion about the cause of Ms Spencer’s death which he found, understandably in the circumstances, to be “unascertained” due to the state of her body.

After hearing evidence before him, he found no self-neglect by Ms Spencer or neglect by the local authority.

It could be argued that the inquest was not – and would not have been intended to be – a vehicle for a satisfactory investigation into the panoply of factors that lead to her death. Nor indeed could that be expected of any inquest.

But questions remain.

Those responsible for her well-being – and this includes Camden Council, who, as her landlord, had a duty of care towards her – essentially appear to be saying that they did all they could for her, that she didn’t respond positively, and that they had no “powers to enforce engagement”.

They also plead: “Her human rights had to be considered.”

Under the Human Rights Act and the European Convention on Rights it could equally be asked: Weren’t her rights denied when her landlord, with full knowledge of her grave disabilities, failed to successfully find a suitable ground-floor flat after living on the 5th floor of a block of flats for more than six years?

And during the whole of that time failed to remove a raised stone entrance to her front door which meant that either carers or neighbours had to carefully push her wheelchair over the step each time she left or returned to her home.

And when no one was around, she somehow had to manoeuvre her wheelchair over the step, however long it took or however painful or uncomfortable.

To remove the step would have taken the council a day or two. 

But in her years of confinement to a wheelchair this task was not carried out. 

Without putting too fine a point on it, weren’t her human rights infringed here? 

Is it possible the step was not removed because all evidence so far suggests that, extraordinarily enough, she does not appear to have been actually visited at her home by a representative of the council.

If she was, then it should have been obvious that the step needed to be removed.

Evidence suggests she was certainly seen by council representatives but not that a proper face-to-face discussion was held in her home.

Moreover, all contact between the council and Ms Spencer appears to have ceased from the summer of 2009 until her death earlier  this year.

In a letter written by Ms Spencer last year – we do not know whether it was sent to the council – she warned that if she was not given help she would be found dead on the floor.

That, in fact, is what happened.

Only a proper inquiry will unearth the tragic facts leading to the death of a middle-aged woman who once worked in the community as a teacher. An inquiry would also help the council to avoid a repetition of such a tragedy as much as it is possible to do so.