Care scandal of Carole Middleton’s cousin: How the dementia cost betrayal of victims losing their savings and homes has even engulfed the Duchess of Cambridge’s family

• Dementia victims are losing their savings and homes paying for their own care
• As this heartbreaking story reveals, it’s even engulfed the Duchess’s own family
• Carole Middleton’s late cousin Ann Terry’s husband has virtually lost his memory 
• He does not realise his care obliterated his life savings at costs of £1,300 a week

Baby Kate Middleton is pictured with Ann Terry. The late Ann Terry’s husband Brian, now 78, has been in a home for three years — during which time he has spent about £90,000 on funding his care

When I first knocked on the door of the unassuming Thirties terrace house in Norwood Green, West London, I did so with trepidation. 

It was 2007 and I was researching the genealogy of the then Kate Middleton for a biography and had been told that Ann Terry, a cousin of her mother, Carole, lived there with her husband Brian.

I hoped they would tell me about Kate’s family history and explain how her family had become gentrified in just a few generations from coal miners in County Durham to British royalty.

So I was thrilled when they welcomed me into their home, made me a cup of tea and started showing me their family albums. 

Listening to Ann and Brian, then 66, talk about their lives, I could not have imagined that, a decade later — after Ann had died from cancer and Brian had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s — I would become the retired engineer’s joint Power of Attorney.

It is in this role that I have seen first-hand the degraded state of Britain’s broken dementia care system.

Thankfully Brian, who has now virtually lost his memory, does not realise his care has obliterated his life savings. But, at costs of £1,300 a week, there is no alternative. His £1,447 monthly pension and the £1,265 rent he gets from his house simply do not cover it

For even relatives of the Royal Family are not immune to our inefficient and unjust system of social care.

Brian, now 78, has been in a home for three years — during which time he has spent about £90,000 on funding his care. Fortunately, he has not been forced to sell his home.

Instead, he has borrowed money using the Government’s deferred payment scheme, where councils lend money to sole-occupier homeowners who have assets worth more than the £23,250 threshold —above which people have to pay for their care — but is tied up in their property.

(The local authority, in this case Richmond Council, assesses people’s financial circumstances before lending money against the value of the house. That amount, plus interest, is then repaid by the person’s family soon after their death.)

But with Brian’s care costs spiralling, we’re now worried we will have to sell his house to pay that money back.

Thankfully Brian, who has now virtually lost his memory, does not realise his care has obliterated his life savings.

But, at costs of £1,300 a week, there is no alternative. His £1,447 monthly pension and the £1,265 rent he gets from his house simply do not cover it.

Living out his final days in a care home in New Malden, Surrey, it is hard to believe Brian is related to the Duchess of Cambridge.

Before he developed Alz-heimer’s, he was enormously proud of his wife’s connection to the Middleton family.

Carole Middleton is pictured above with daughter Kate. Living out his final days in a care home in New Malden, Surrey, it is hard to believe Brian is related to the Duchess of Cambridge

She was Carole Middleton’s first cousin and Kate’s first cousin once removed: her mother, Joyce, and Carole’s father, Ronald Goldsmith, were siblings.

Indeed, Ann and Joyce were the only members of the Goldsmith family, apart from immediate relatives, to be invited to Carole’s wedding to Michael Middleton, as well as Kate’s christening in 1982.

Ann and Brian were close to Ann’s aunt and uncle — Kate’s grandparents — Ronald and Dorothy, who lived in a neighbouring street. 

They frequently went to dances together and Dorothy helped at the jewellery shop in Hounslow that Ann managed. But, sadly, they lost touch when the Goldsmiths moved to Berkshire.

And so, when I sheepishly knocked on their door, they had no idea Ann’s first cousin once removed was dating Prince William — let alone that she would go on to marry him.

Over the next few years, I kept in touch with the hard-working couple, but it was only after Ann’s death from cancer at the age of 63 in 2010 that I ‘inherited’ Brian.

Having spent the last years of her life caring for his wife, he’d had little time for maintaining friendships and soon became incredibly lonely.

After I attended Ann’s funeral, we started speaking more frequently, and our friendship grew.

Over the next months, Brian told me his story: the only child of aircraft engineer Stanley Terry and his wife Muriel, he was born in 1941 during World War II. 

He, too, became an engineer after leaving school aged 15 and went on to work as a draughtsman developing naval sonar systems for the Ministry of Defence.

He met Ann in the same year he left school, and the two were married in 1965.

Though they were unable to have children, they found meaning through volunteering for charities right through to Ann’s death 45 years later.

It was four years after her death that it first dawned on me that something was wrong with Brian: his vocabulary was disappearing, and he would often replace everyday words with ‘thingy’.

And so in July, I took him to the West London Cognitive Disorders Treatment and Research Unit at West Middlesex University Hospital.

‘At interview, Mr Terry was bright, warm and reactive,’ the specialist wrote at the time. ‘He engaged very well in the interview process but had marked word-finding difficulties.

‘Cognitively, he was impaired in terms of his speech; however there were less evident deficits in terms of his cognition as regards to his memory.’ 

We didn’t know what to do until, four months later, on November 27, 2014, Brian received his heart-breaking diagnosis.

‘Mr Terry has an Alzheimer’s type dementia with evidence of both cognitive and functioning decline,’ the consultant said.

We had no choice but to make sure Brian received care straight away. With the help of his next-door-neighbour Ray Kay, a BT engineer, and his wife Helen, I organised for carers to look after Brian at home. 

But, it became increasingly obvious, as Brian began wandering around the streets in a state of undress, that he needed more care.

For if even a relation of the future Queen of the United Kingdom cannot escape the despoiled clutches of our broken dementia care system, what hope is there for any of us?

At first, he point-blank refused to move. He had lived in his £400,000 home virtually since the day he was born and was determined to die there.

After much persuasion, he finally relented and agreed to go to Homelink, a nearby day centre in Twickenham, where he gained a new lease of life: making friends, getting home-cooked meals and playing games. He loved them and they loved him.

Indeed, many of the carers who have looked after Brian over the years have been lovely.

But, as so often happens with dementia patients, his treatment has been marked by neglect.

The dementia care system as a whole is fundamentally broken, with many carers and NHS workers failing to display a rudimentary understanding of the disease.

For example, there was the time when, before Ray and I were granted Power of Attorney for both Brian’s financial and health affairs in 2016, I took him for an endoscopy at Ealing Hospital as he was losing weight and I feared he might have cancer.

He was referred there by a consultant, who knew he had dementia, and we filled in the initial form with a nurse, who also knew of his condition. I thought I had left Brian in capable hands and went to work while he had the procedure. Except he didn’t.

Left on his own with the consultant, Brian was unable to confirm his date of a birth — not unusual with victims of dementia — and the consultant refused to proceed.

It meant she was unable to fill in the necessary forms, she said, and that was that.

It was a classic example of bureaucracy triumphing over common sense.

Sadly, it is not just our overworked NHS failing to address the needs of people with dementia. Our care system is equally broken.

After Brian’s condition severely deteriorated in July 2016, we moved him to Laurel Dene Care Home in Hampton, Middlesex.

I wrongly chose it because it looked like a smart hotel, costing almost £1,250 a week.

But it did not give Brian the personal attention he craved, often leaving him holed up in his room in the evenings and at weekends.

While unpacking his crumpled clothes from his bag, the owner, Sylvia Warren, discovered pills he had secretly spat out and tried to hide. She counted the mixed medication and discovered 120 tablets [File photo]

He became increasingly dishevelled and, after 11 months, when I took him out to lunch one time, he smelt overwhelmingly of urine. At one point, as we walked down the street, his sodden incontinence pad fell off him and down one trouser leg.

I was appalled.

This was a man who was paying an extortionate amount of money to be looked after in his final years — only to be neglected and degraded at every turn.

But if that was scandalous, it was only when we moved him into his next care home — St Mary’s House, in the same town — that I realised the extent of the atrocious care he had been receiving.

While unpacking his crumpled clothes from his bag, the owner, Sylvia Warren, discovered pills he had secretly spat out and tried to hide. She counted the mixed medication and discovered 120 tablets.

She said: ‘It demonstrated neglect to the highest degree: the carers hadn’t bothered to ensure Brian was taking his much-needed medication.’

After I made a complaint, the regional director of Care UK, which was administering his previous care, Karen Seabrook, apologised.

She wrote: ‘I have addressed this concern with the senior team and put additional checking measures in place to ensure that residents are swallowing their medication and ensuring enough fluid is encouraged and taken to prevent the likelihood of this happening again.’

Brian thrived at St Mary’s House and blossomed under their attentive care. But, sadly, he began to run away as it was not a secure unit.

And so, on May 7 this year, we moved him to the award-winning Devonshire Dementia Care Unit, in New Malden, South-west London.

Given his deteriorated state, Brian is as happy as he can be.

Thankfully, he does not remember the neglect, ridicule and mistreatment he has had to endure. But I will.

For if even a relation of the future Queen of the United Kingdom cannot escape the despoiled clutches of our broken dementia care system, what hope is there for any of us?

Claudia Joseph is author of Kate: The Making Of A Princess.

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