RELATIVES of residents in a Callington care home have publicly stated their support for the staff, following the home coming under fire after being secretly filmed for the BBC programme Panorama.

St Theresa’s Care Centre is one of several homes run by the Morleigh Group and was featured in the programme, which aired in November, along with Clinton House in St Austell, which has since been closed.

Panorama filmed over four weeks on hidden cameras with undercover reporters posing as residents and care assistants.

Some of the most serious incidents revealed were at Clinton House and included a resident being given morphine to ‘shut her up’. Following the filming, the Panorama team raised safeguarding concerns with the local authority.

However, a number of relatives of the residents being cared for at St Theresa’s have shown their support for the staff, with residents being shown ‘kindness and love’ and calling the care provided ‘outstanding’.

In a letter to the Times, they said: ‘Following recent coverage of some issues which have arisen in some Cornish care homes, including St Theresa’s in Callington, we — all being relatives of residents — would like to make a public statement of support for the staff at St Theresa’s.

‘In our recent meetings with Cornwall Council, one fact has been mentioned time and time again and that is that the care provided by the staff at St Theresa’s is outstanding. The residents, some of whom have very high levels of dependency, are extremely well looked after, with kindness and love, and we want to make it clear that the staff who are working there have our full confidence. Indeed we thank them unreservedly for the excellent work that they do.

‘Care of frail, elderly people is an extremely demanding job, one which many of us would find challenging to perform well. It is widely reported that resources are sorely stretched across the whole social care sector and the people who are caring so well for our elderly relatives, in the face of so many constraints, deserve the respect and admiration of everyone in the community at this difficult time.’