A CARE WORKER has been cleared of ill-treating or neglecting a resident at a respite care home.

A severely-disabled man, now aged 40, was spending a weekend at the home in Cowdenbeath when the alleged incident occurred in 2017.

Stephen Emmanual, 63, of Baird Court, Lochgelly, went on trial at Dunfermline Sheriff Court.

He denied a charge that between June 10-11 2017, at Broad Street Care Home, Cowdenbeath, he ill-treated or wilfully neglected a patient under his care by failing to remain with him when he woke up during the night and left him unattended, whereby he fell to the ground in the lounge area and was injured and he thereafter failed to record the incident in the progress notes.

At the end of the Crown case, there was a defence submission of “no case to answer” which was upheld by Sheriff William Gilchrist, who acquitted Emmanuel.

Earlier in the trial, the disabled man’s mother said she had received a phone call from staff at the home to say bruises had been found on her son.

As the injured man is unable to speak, management at the staff were still trying to establish at that time what had happened.

The mother told the court the bruising to her son’s body was “horrendous”.