Families accuse care home of 'neglect' and 'cruelty' after secret filming

Families of elderly residents at one of Scotland's largest care homes have accused its owners of "cruelty" and "neglect" after a BBC investigation revealed a series of care failures.

As a BBC Disclosure reporter, I worked undercover as a cleaner in Castlehill Care Home in Inverness for seven weeks over the summer.

In that time, I saw vulnerable elderly people left sitting alone for hours in urine-soaked clothes or lying in wet bedsheets, often calling out for help.

I also saw a female residents screaming in distress over male carers doing intimate personal care, due to chronic staff shortages.

During the period I was undercover the home was in special measures because of improvement notices issued by regulator, the Care Inspectorate.

The watchdog said it "continued to have concerns" about care at Castlehill and was monitoring it.

Castlehill Care Home said it operated to the highest clinical standards, in accordance with a personal care plan, which is agreed with families.

The care home tried unsuccessfully to take the BBC to court to prevent the documentary being broadcast.

Operated by Morar Living, Castlehill is the biggest care home in Inverness, with beds for 88 people.

It is billed as a luxury home, offering "kind, compassionate and specialist" dementia care, and it costs up to £1,800 per week to live there.

Many residents pay for their care themselves while others are paid for by the state.

NHS Highland has paid almost £10m in fees to Castlehill since it opened in 2019.

In my time working as a housekeeper at the home, I witnessed concerning medical care, which left one woman who was living with dementia in extreme distress on a regular basis.

Her illness had led to her pulling off her stoma bag that collects bodily waste from the abdomen.

Care staff were supposed to support her and reattach the bag but were often too busy, leaving the woman wandering around the home screaming for help - in one instance for more than an hour.

This happened seven times while I was in Castlehill and often led to excrement being left around the corridors and lounges.

At other times, residents were left sitting in chairs for up to eight hours at a time, with little stimulation other than a TV on the wall.

One woman's daughter complained to me that her mother hadn't been showered for two weeks. Her mother added: "There's no one around to shower you".

While I was in the home, I noticed that some residents simply wanted to go outside but in my seven weeks working at Castlehill I saw residents taken outside only a handful of times.

One elderly man with dementia was able, several times, to bypass code-access security doors, which are meant to ensure vulnerable people stayed safely on their own floor.

He was usually intercepted at reception but one morning I found him walking out of the front door.

He had got down in the lift past two security doors.

I had to intervene to ensure his safety.

The BBC investigation began after Disclosure spoke to Susan Christie, whose father moved to Castlehill in 2023 after showing symptoms of dementia.

"We looked at Castlehill and we just fell in love with the place. It was an absolute dream," she said.

"They had a piano as you went into the entrance. It had a cinema room. It's absolutely beautiful. It's a stunning building."

Susan began to have concerns about her father's care after finding him wet with urine when she visited.

She was so concerned that in April she installed a secret camera in his bedroom.

"The first day or two of footage, it was things that I already suspected," she said.

"He wasn't being washed properly, he was being left in an incontinence pad for in excess of 12 hours, never taken to the toilet, food placed out of reach, spilling hot porridge on himself.

"It was neglect."

The camera also recorded a carer drinking from his juice jug.

It was noted in the Care App, a digital record of residents' daily care updates, that Susan's father had drunk fluids directly from the jug. He hadn't.

On another occasion, Susan watched as two carers spoke to her dad about going for a shower.

He has had a lifelong fear of being showered due to an incident in his childhood. It was recorded in his care plan that he requires a bath or bed wash.

Susan said: "I watched a 23-minute interaction, and the word 'shower,' which my dad is afraid of, was mentioned on 22 occasions. That's almost once a minute.

"I watched him become more and more distressed. This seemed to be like a game to them."

The final straw came when a cleaner was filmed restraining the elderly man and violently shaking the bed frame before prodding him with a walking stick.

"I'd had enough," said Susan.

She moved him out of Castlehill in May.

In the week after he left, Susan says staff continued to record in the Care App that he was sleeping well and was comfortable in bed.

Susan complained about her dad's treatment at Castlehill to the Care Inspectorate. Her complaint was upheld in full and the cleaner was sacked.

She also reported two carers to their regulatory body.

Susan was not the only person to complain.

Freedom of Information requests show that no other care home in Scotland had more complaints upheld against it in 2024 than Castlehill. There were 10 in total.

Many of the issues related to short staffing, which was a chronic problem when I worked there.

It was clear to me that there were some staff who cared about residents and were driven by making their lives better, but there simply weren't enough of them to do that on a regular basis.

On one weekend shift working in the home in July, several staff called in sick, leaving two carers and a nurse to manage a floor of 23 residents, many of whom had dementia and mobility issues.

It resulted in distressed residents calling out from their beds throughout the day for help to get washed and dressed, and to go to the toilet.

At other times, staff failed to change continence aids regularly enough. This was a particular problem on level one, known as the dementia floor.

One resident could be seen leaving a trail of footprints in urine as he walked in a loop around the home's corridors.

When I was cleaning on floor one, I sometimes heard women screaming from behind their bedroom doors because they didn't want to be washed and dressed by male carers.

One morning I knocked on the door to offer help.

The room belonged to a 73-year-old called Rachel, a former nurse who had spent her life caring for others.

I showed the footage from that incident, and another, to Rachel's daughter-in-law, Linda Larkin.

"She was completely distressed," Linda said.

"She was wringing her hands. She was scared. I trusted them. And they've seriously let us down, and they've let her down. That's cruelty."

Linda said she felt "betrayed" that Rachel was repeatedly given intimate personal care by male carers, despite express wishes from her family for female carers.

"It was one of the things that Rachel had always said to us", she said.

"'I don't mind men being around men, but I don't want men to do my personal care. Please, please, if I end up in a care home, don't allow that to happen'.

"So, it was something that me and my husband were really strict about. We thought that was being respected."

The family are now in the process of moving Rachel to a new home.

We asked nursing consultant and former chief nurse of the Care Inspectorate, Dr Jane Douglas, to review some of the secret footage.

She said: "There clearly wasn't enough staff to support these people who had very complex care needs, and there was a lot going on.

"People were very unsettled in that environment and there wasn't a presence of enough people, as in staff, to support them.

"Where there was good interaction, they responded positively to that. But I think that was minimal."

Dr Douglas added: "For as long as I've worked in the sector, staffing has always been an issue. Recruiting staff, but retaining staff is an issue as well.

"We're also competing with supermarkets and other employers, who pay more money."

Castlehill pays carers £13 per hour. This is in line with other care homes.

Morar Living operates 18 care homes across the UK.

Internal documents show it expects to make pre-tax profits of more than £90m in the next five years.

It also projects the company will be worth more than £500m by 2027.

A spokesperson for Castlehill Care Home, which trades under the name Simply Inverness, said: "Each resident's wellbeing is consistently monitored and evaluated to inform the level of care required.

"During the period in question, independent external third parties were routinely in the home."

The spokesperson added that a clinical lead has been appointed to "oversee extra support for the most vulnerable residents" and said the company is investing more than £1m to refurbish the home.

The BBC has spoken to several families who say they have seen improvements in the past month.

I also witnessed more activities and engagement with residents in my final week there in August.

Castlehill has been the subject of two multi-agency large scale investigations in the past five years - one is still ongoing.

In May, the Care Inspectorate issued it with an improvement notice after grading it as "unsatisfactory" in three key areas.

The home was warned if it did not make improvements in care planning, staffing, leadership and the care of residents, it could lose its registration and close.

Inspectors carried out regular checks and Castlehill was issued with further improvement notice targets and deadlines over the course of the summer, during the time the BBC was investigating.

A spokesperson for the Care Inspectorate said: "While the service met the conditions set out in the Improvement Notice, there are outstanding requirements from the previous inspection in May 2025 that we are following up on.

"We continue to have concerns about the care experienced by residents and we are monitoring the home closely.

"We will not hesitate to take further action where it is required."

A spokesperson for Highland Health and Social Care Partnership said: "We have a responsibility as a lead partner with regards to Adult Support and Protection and we have clear expectations of standards to be met by any care home provider in Highland. The provider of Castlehill care home has not met those standards.

"At this time care home admissions remain suspended."