By: Stephen Gordon
An “arrogant” care home worker took a photo of an elderly resident and sent it on Snapchat with the caption “Bitch”, a tribunal has been told. Ankit Shah has been issued with a removal order by an NI Social Care Council (NISCC) fitness to practise committee. Shah had been working as a care assistant at the Rosevale Lodge Care Home in Lisburn at the time of the incident in June 2024. The elderly woman he photographed suffered from dementia. In evidence to the committee, a manager at the care home said that, in her dealings with Shah, she “found him to be arrogant”. Three misconduct charges were found proven against Shah including that, on June 3, 2024, he took a photograph of a service user with dementia without their knowledge or consent. Shah was also found to have added an offensive caption about the service user and to have shared the image via social media with a third party. The tribunal was told the manager at Rosevale raised the matter with the NISCC on June 7, 2024, saying a message had been received from [name redacted] claiming “one of our employees, Ankit Shah had sent her a screenshot of one of our residents via Snapchat”. The manager added: “She had attached evidence. The resident was pictured fully clothed sitting in a chair, but the name ‘bitch’ had been added to the photo. “There was also a copy of a snippet of a conversation attached which read ‘what has she done’ with response ‘all day she’s bla bla bla bla’.” Shah was subsequently suspended from work. In evidence, a manager said that when the allegations were put to Shah, “he shrugged his shoulders, did not offer an apology, and was not overly concerned”. She said that she had only known Shah for five or six months since she took over her managerial role. She added that no concerns about his direct care of service users had previously been identified. The tribunal heard that, on October 17, 2024, as the Health Trust continued to investigate the case, the home manager invited Shah to an initial right-to-reply meeting scheduled for the following week. But Shah replied that he had returned to India “due to significant emotional distress”, and that he was unable to attend the meeting on that date. Shah then handed in his notice, with immediate effect, via email on October 25, 2024. The manager said that due to the service user’s dementia, she was not aware of the photo incident and did not have the ability to understand or retain the information. The committee said Shah’s misconduct was an abuse of his position of trust and a serious breach of professional standards. It added: “The misconduct involved the abuse of a vulnerable service user. Shah has not apologised or provided any evidence of remorse or regret. He has not engaged with the council or attended the hearing”. Barring him from working in the care sector, it said: “In all of the circumstances, the committee concluded that a removal order is the only sanction available to protect the public and to meet the public interest.”
