CONCERNS and complaints of care home residents' families have driven investigations into alleged neglect at South Wales care homes, through Operation Jasmine and the Flynn Review.

The Justice for Jasmine action group, formed by relatives who believe their loved ones suffered neglect and abuse, has done much to keep the issue in the spotlight, and they have welcomed Dr Flynn's report.

Catherine Cawte's mother Dorothea Hale was a resident of Grosvenor House in Abertillery for more than two months before she died in January 2007. Mrs Hale's death was deemed suspicious by Operation Jasmine 14 months later.

Ms Cawte gave evidence at a Nursing and Midwifery Council hearing last year, after which the home's manager Susan Reynolds and deputy manager Clare Hayward, who was also Mrs Hale's named nurse, were struck off when what the NMC panel chairman described as “shocking failures” in the standard of care were found proven.

She welcomed the report's laying bare of neglect allegations, and attempts to investigate them, but said that for her it raised more questions.

"A lot of the things in here, I didn't know about until recently, and I'd like to know more about Operation Vermont," she said. That operation concerned the investigation into Mrs Hale's death and a subsequent wider probe of care standards at Grosvenor Nursing Home.

Despite her mother being in the home only a couple of months, Ms Cawte said she developed "significant" pressure sores.

Ms Cawte knew nothing about them until her mother was admitted to hospital shortly before she died, and she has only recently allowed herself to look at the photographs.

"I am a nurse but the things doctor at the hospital told me after my mother was admitted will haunt me forever," she said.

"All I want is changes to be made so no-one ever has to suffer like my mother did."

The family of ex-miner Stanley Bradford want change too. The 76-year-old died in September 2005 after barely three months at the Brithdir care home run by Dr Das' Puretruce company.

His granddaughter Haley Evans and daughters Pamela Cook and Gaynor Evans were at the launch of the review report and said lessons must be learned.

"No-one told us of the history, the problems and concerns about Brithdir, and that an embargo on placements there had only just been lifted when we chose the home for him," said Mrs Cook.