A CARER has been jailed for one year after stealing cash from a pensioner she was supposed to be looking after.

Deborah Jones was working at Heathlands Village in Heathlands Drive, Prestwich, when, on October 7, 2014, she went into the bedroom of an 87-year-old resident and stole their Santander debit card.

Over a 28-day period, the 43-year-old, of Bosworth Close, Whitefield, used the card 14 times to draw out £3,500 at a cash machine in Salford.

The alarm was raised when Jones's colleagues could not find the card.

Heathlands Village bosses reported the matter to the police and, when interviewed, Jones denied the offences and pleaded not guilty to charges of theft and fraud at Bury Magistrates Court on May 8.

However, she later changed her plea to guilty and was sentenced at Bolton Crown Court last Friday.

After the hearing, the Fed's chief operative officer Mark Cunningham said: "We would first like to express our sadness for the distress and anxiety caused to our resident who was the victim of Debbie Jones's actions, and to the person's family.

"At the same time, we are extremely relieved that Friday's court hearing concludes this very sorry episode.

"The Heathlands Village care home employs over 340 staff, we subscribe to all of the safeguards prescribed by the Care Quality Commission and local authority commissioning bodies relating to the recruitment of staff and safeguarding of vulnerable people in our care.

"We impose a range of measures designed to protect those we look after, including Disclosure and Barring Service status checks, referencing, ongoing staff training and development, supervision, appraisal, auditing of standards and accountability to our code of conduct.

"Jones's conviction was due, in no small part, to the steps we took to identify possible culprits, gather evidence and notify the police at an early stage of our suspicions.

"It highlights how much can be achieved by social care employers, who look after people who are potentially at risk, working in partnership with the police."

Mr Cunningham added: "We are hugely grateful to the police for all their support and the positive approach to working with us.

"We are very satisfied with the judge's sentencing, which we believe appropriately reflects Jones’s gross betrayal of her duty of care to someone she was employed to look after, and her breach of trust to us as her employer.

"The sentence firmly underlines our commitment to safeguarding vulnerable people in our care and our policy of zero tolerance of any form of abusive behaviour."