Cover-up allows DWP and other public bodies to avoid detailed probe into disabled woman’s death

A local council, police and NHS have helped cover up the failures that led to a disabled woman’s body being found in her flat months after her benefits had been removed, Disability News Service (DNS) has discovered.

Havering council told DNS three years ago that the death of Sophia Yuferev, a talented artist who lived with significant mental distress and a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, had been referred to the local safeguarding board for a possible safeguarding adult review (SAR).

The Care Act 2014 states that there should be an SAR if there is concern over the way local agencies worked together to safeguard an adult who died due to abuse or neglect.

Sophia (pictured) had been living on a sandwich a day for the last few months of her life, and may essentially have starved to death after both her employment and support allowance (ESA) and her personal independence payment (PIP) were stopped.

Her body was discovered by police in her flat in Hornchurch, Essex, in November 2021, weeks after she had died.

Her electricity had been cut off months earlier for non-payment of bills.

Two months before she died, Havering council sent her a summons for non-payment of council tax, and the previous year she had faced eviction by her housing association for non-payment of rent.

The council was not aware of her “vulnerability”, it later confirmed to DNS.

Although her family alerted her mental health team to the financial problems caused by DWP cutting off her benefits, they say nothing was done to help her.

But despite all these multi-agency failures, Havering council confirmed to DNS this week that its local safeguarding board – whose members include representatives of the council, local NHS, and the Metropolitan police – had decided not to carry out a review.

But it also confirmed that it had failed to inform Sophia’s family of this decision.

Sophia’s mother, Maria Stockdale, who is also disabled, said the failure to carry out a safeguarding review showed that public bodies “just cover up for each other”.

She said: “The law has to protect people like us, but it looks as though it works against people like us.”

She said DWP and the other public bodies “are not just destroying my daughter, they are destroying the whole family”.

And she said it seemed as though the family would never have answers to what happened to Sophia.

She said: “That is the worst situation, because I have no answer, I have no justice, I have no satisfaction.

“I don’t even know the date that she died, we don’t know why she died.

“They just cover up for each other; there is nothing for people like me at all.”

An inquest in July 2022 concluded that Sophia’s death was due to ketoacidosis of “unknown” cause, although DWP was not asked to give evidence to the inquest.

The inquest had heard that one of the causes of ketoacidosis is starvation, and Sophia had told her mother that she had been living throughout the last summer of her life on one sandwich a day from a local café.

After her death, her family discovered documents that showed how DWP had hounded Sophia over her benefit claims for several years, with the first documented removal of her ESA dating back to 2014, and evidence of a PIP removal in July 2017, with documents showing both her PIP and ESA being repeatedly removed and then eventually reinstated.

DWP should have been aware of Sophia’s history of suicide attempts and detentions under the Mental Health Act.

She had been sectioned on numerous occasions, including on 27 November 2019, just 10 days after DWP wrote to tell her that her PIP was ending because she had failed to return a review form on time.

Three months later, Swan Housing Association threatened her with eviction because of non-payment of rent.

It is believed this was because her ESA had again been stopped by DWP.

Documents suggest that her PIP was eventually reinstated in January 2020, and her ESA later that year, but her PIP was then removed again in February 2021 and her ESA removed again in April 2021.

Days after she is believed to have died, in October 2021, DWP wrote to her to say that it was reinstating her PIP.

Sophia, who was 37 when she died, had a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, and during her frequent periods of psychosis she would turn on her mother, who lived nearby, accusing her of collaborating with the police.

On several occasions she had run away – to local woodland, where she had lived for several months, to Siberia, in the middle of winter, and to Israel – to escape those she believed were conspiring against her.

During 2019, Sophia had accused her mother and female neighbours of being witches, and she once accused a woman walking her dog of sending messages to the police.

But despite her enduring and significant mental distress, and inability to cope with day-to-day life, her benefits were still repeatedly stopped and then reinstated by DWP.

DWP told DNS three years ago that it carried out its own secret internal process review (IPR) into the circumstances surrounding Sophia’s death and her benefit claims, although – as with all IPRs – this was kept secret and was not shared with her family.

Because of the decision not to carry out a safeguarding review, the information from the IPR has not been assessed by an independent safeguarding expert.

After living with her mother and step-father for many years, Sophia had moved into nearby sheltered accommodation for two years, but was moved to a filthy and “uninhabitable” housing association flat yards from the A127 dual carriageway without – her family say – any assessment of her needs being carried out by the local mental health trust, North East London Foundation NHS Trust (NELFT)*.

Her family believe the rapid fluctuations in her blood sugar levels caused by periods of near-starvation were linked to her death.

She was being given injections of flupenthixol – a powerful anti-psychotic, which is linked to an increased risk of diabetes – every two weeks, but the family say the trust had failed for two years to ensure she received the three-monthly blood tests she needed.

They believe that the rapid fluctuations in her blood sugar levels, caused by not having enough money for a proper diet after her benefits were cut, led to the ketoacidosis and caused her death.

In late September 2021, Sophia had another psychotic episode and again cut off contact with her mother.

After 3 October, when Maria told Sophia that her grandmother had died, there was no reply to further messages, but NELFT refused to respond to Maria’s repeated calls raising concerns about her daughter.

The inquest heard that the trust had been significantly under-staffed, and the family believe that, because of staff sickness, Sophia did not have anyone acting as her care coordinator for months, with the trust relying on temporary staff who did not know the details of her case.

None of this will now be examined in detail by a safeguarding review.

The council confirmed this week that a safeguarding review should take place following the death of an adult with care or support needs, whose death may have resulted from abuse or neglect, and there was reasonable cause for concern about how local agencies worked together to safeguard that person.

All of those elements appear to have been satisfied.

But the council confirmed that no safeguarding review had been ordered and the family had not been informed.

A council spokesperson said: “The Safeguarding Adult Board considered the safeguarding adult review (SAR) referral in 2022.

“It concluded that this case, whilst very tragic, did not pass the statutory threshold for an SAR.

“We apologise to the family that they were not contacted but families would usually only be told about an SAR once it has been agreed to proceed.

“An independent reviewer is then appointed and it is only then that the family would be contacted and invited to participate.

“Therefore, in this case the council did not have any contact with the family in relation to a SAR or prior to Sophia’s death.”

*NELFT’s actions are currently being examined as part of The Lampard Inquiry into more than 2,000 deaths of mental health inpatients in Essex between 2000 and 2023

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