To be horrified at what my friend has done

[Letthedicefly]

She is a carer for elderly people in their own homes and stole £5 from a lady with dementia.

She is in pieces as she's been caught and keeps saying she only meant to borrow it and would have put it back. She knows it was so wrong but she's in an abusive relationship and had no access to money.

Now she's going to lose her job and get a criminal record which will make her more dependent on him.

I know she's in the wrong but I'm so upset for her as well.

No sympathy whatsoever! I am a carer and it's people like her who give us all a bad name. I couldn't even look at myself if I had done that (not that I would in a million years). I was in an abusive relationship whilst caring and had financial trouble and had lots of problems but I never considered doing that. I highly doubt it was the first time.

I feel for you, OP. What your friend has done is absolutely horrid. I won't go in to that... it's all been said. But it's a difficult place for you to be as her friend. I think you sound very caring, and looking for the best in her. You sound like a good friend. I don't have anything very helpful to say I'm afraid, just wanted to acknowledge how tough it is for you in this situation, and you're obviously struggling because you've reached out on here. I hope things work out.

As a social worker in an adults safeguarding team, I was frequently working on cases where paid carers (as well as family members) had financial abused at risk adults. Without fail, every single one of the perpetrators had a sob story. I'm afraid I have become cynical in my old age. I know there are often mitigating factors (particularly when it's an informal carer/family member) but my tolerance for sob stories from paid staff is very low these days.

Kaydon The situation with my father is absolutely revolting. Someone accepting cheques when my father wasn't mentally capable.

derxa I'm so sorry for you. Although I have seen a lot of bad, I am not hardened to it. I still find it as shocking and saddening as I did the day the first case landed on my desk. It hurts more than the individual concerned; it harms their families too. As someone else has said up thread, it makes Joe Public more distrustful too which is a shame because the vast, vast majority of care workers do a fantastic job. It's not just about a "fiver" from the "old person" that is stolen, it is so much more.

I wonder what the response would have been had the woman herself posted in relationships about her abusive marriage and then mentioned the £5....?

I would say the same. It gets quite tedious hearing the same sob stories instead of people owning their mistakes.

Employees abusing a position of trust, especially when the victim is a vulnerable person, is viewed very very seriously by the courts.People usually go down for this.But if there really is no evidence that she has stolen before she will probably escape jail in view of the fact it was only £5

This is a betrayal of trust and your friend has done a bad thing. If it is the first time and its only £5 its the thin end of the wedge.
However I don't agree with people who are saying they could never be friends with her again etc-she needs help with her current situation.
I have to admit though that this would change my feelings towards her to some degree and I would find it difficult to completely trust her. Had she not been caught she may have been tempted to take 'just a little bit' again-so its as well that she was caught.
She won't go down for this amount. Someone stole thousands of pounds from a 90 year-old friend of my Mum's-they got 12 months but were quickly released when a well-off member of their family repaid the money.

I don't have any sympathy for her and I wouldn't trust or want someone like that around me. For £5, really?

You say she was going to replace it as if that would make it not stealing.

She stole money from someone with dementia who she was responsible for caring for. It does not get much lower than that.

And it us most certainly not the first time she has done it, I would bet a month's salary on that. It is the first time anyone knows she has done it.

I have no sympathy. My godmother had all of her jewellery stolen by two carers- some of it from her fingers while they 'held her hands' supposedly comforting her and actually removing 3 emerald, ruby and diamond rings. They were caught trying to sell one of them.

My mum had a terrible time with carers being uncaring. I ended up making a formal complaint to an ombudsman about the quality of care provided by the council through this private company.Every one of the 15 points of the complaint was upheld. The council were delighted because they hated the company but felt their hads were tied by the government insisting they put adult social care provision out to private tender.

I have no sympathy whatsoever with your friend. She is an able bodied adult who makes her own decisions about what she does. There is always another choice.

There but for the grace of god go any of us. I believe in second chances. If there was no evidence for previous misdemeanour why not give her the benefit and believe her.

what no one is saying here is people like this woman are not paid enough.

What about comparing carers' pay rises with MPs of late?

Shelagh, she'd likely have been advised to go to a refuge and seek financial help. Not become a thief.

Oh fuck off nigelslater, you're ignoring the fact tens of thousands of carers manage on low wages without stealing from anybody.

Not being paid enough is no excuse.

That doesn't justify it.

Plenty of us have been carers, or worked in jobs that have paid the same. Plenty of us have also been in abusive relationships whilst working these jobs. Our choices are our own.

And when it comes to working with vulnerable people, giving people the benefit of the doubt when it's clear they've done something wrong, shouldn't be an option. Our first and foremost is to protect them. As their employees, as someone who has the responsibility entrusted to them to care, to be able to enter their homes, we have an absolute duty to safeguard them from things like this.

Some of these people are as vulnerable as children. If someone did something to a child you would not see them easily forgiven and able to work in the role again

So what? What does this have to do with MPs and their wages?! NOTHING.

Stop these excuses. Blimey, does no one take any responsibility these days?! Jeez.

Aha! The thread has hit its natural frequency and is now going to wobble and wobble until it shakes itself apart.

Wibble and wobble.

That's 'wibble' i-phone! Got it?

Er, right.

Thecat can I have some of what you've had please

Oh come on. You know: the point when people start posting quite strange and extraneous posts.
I thought calling it the thread event horizon was a bit dull. Natural frequency is where objects vibrate with increasing velocity/force, and it falls apart.

It's not such a strange metaphor, surely?

Ive been a carer for a long time now, and its stories like this that make me sad, when i done home care i used to always think about how i would feel in the service users position of having a stranger in your home and having to rely on that stranger (in home care the staff turnover can be quite high so you have a conveyor belt of new carers coming in and out of your home) how must that person feel? Scared and anxious i expect. I'm sure i wouldn't like it, especially if i was a vulnerable person.

I'm pretty sure most of the carers i worked with also thought like that, we put ourselves in their position. So, why on earth, knowing that, would you steal from somebody in that position? How could anybody be so cruel as to do that to somebody who is vulnerable and probably already worried about having carers in?

I don't believe your friends story either, families don't tend to shell out for CCTV cameras unless stuff is going missing and they want to find the culprit. This is obviously not the first theft from that house

Your friend has no phone so couldn't call a friend to borrow a fiver? Hmm well not sure many home care companies would be too happy about that. I had to use my phone many times during each shift, sometimes work called me to change some calls around, often i had to ring the on-call to ask for advice on things such as medication, sometimes there would be an emergency and id have to call for help, sometimes i couldn't find an address so had to call the office for directions, some of my calls where "double ups" and id be in touch with the other carer incase one of us was running late. A phone is fairly essential in a job like that

And besides, how did she tell you all this if she couldn't contact you?

Nice language lazylohan: Stay classy San Diego.

Of course many low paid workers don't steal. But we live in a country that honours, celebrates and rewards people who effectively steal on a gargantuan scale. The Queen's birthday honours list has awards for individuals who have been running the charities who are actively, right now, being criticised for institutionalising the hounding of a lot more than £5 from the vulnerable elderly on a national scale. Go figure.

Jeremy Isaacs, was awarded the CBE this year. He was named in the official report into the collapse of Lehman Brothers bank. He was its chief executive for Europe, the Middle East and Asia up to the financial meltdown of 2008 as the bank took increasingly greater risks.

Private Eye reports "The report cites emails showing how Isaacs pretended things were ok even as the black hole was growing. In August 2008, when Lehman was in secret talks to fill the hole by selling 50 percent of its shares to Korean financiers, Ian Lowitt, chief financial officer, was deeply worried, but Isaacs reassured him: "Fingers crossed. Things usually work out for the best!!!” The sale failed.

A week before Lehmann collapsed, Isaacs said he was leaving. As the roof fell in its “remuneration committee” then authorised a $5m pay off for him. Isaacs’ honours citation is “for services to the NHS” – he has a minor job on the Imperial College NHS Trust board. NHS staff are no doubt delighted for him."

I have to ask the question, one person in the UK contributes to the imploding of our global economy and gets a $5 million dollar pension and a gong from the Queen. Another who may be genuinely cash strapped takes a fiver from an innocent person and loses their job perhaps to struggle to get another job.

This is our culture. Commit a massive crime and you get rewarded. Commit a tiny crime and you get the full wrath of mumsnet in all its vindictive glory. Nice culture.

Oh I remember, the gongs are going to people who have given money to the Conservative Party. So one rule for them and one rule for the rest. You can buy justice in this country, we always act like you can't, and that the developing world is full of corruption, which it is of course. But I think the Queen's Honours List is shocking in these recent awards.

I'm quite sure we all would heavily criticise that nigels were a thread made for us to discuss it. As this isn't said thread, we are sticking to the topic.

One persons wrong doing on a larger scale does not forgive another's.

But how can the disproportionate clamour for one to be stoned and the other be rewarded not be relevant.

It seems incredibly narrow minded. We live in a very unjust society and there are powerful people ripping off the elderly and the vulnerable and the people of Greece who I believe were hit hard by Lehman brothers collapse.

You're obviously happy for the huge thieves to get away with it and to beat up on the little guy. I think it is massively relevant to this kind of crime. £5 is wrong to take but she didn't contribute to the virtual collapse of our economy, I think you should get some perspective. Sometimes people tell the truth, sometimes people do borrow a fiver and put it back. Some people shaft the lot of us and get rewarded and lauded. I think it is relevant.