The Sydney hearings are focusing on the more than 50 per cent of residents who have some form of dementia. They were some of "Australia's most vulnerable" because they couldn't express their needs or complain, said Peter Gray, QC, senior counsel assisting the commission. Hearings on Monday and Tuesday are hearing from witnesses about the use of physical and psychotropic drugs to control patients, although a range of studies suggested their use is widespread. In other evidence to the commission, Lillian Reeves described how a six week respite stay in a Sydney aged care facility run by Garden View Aged Care Pty Ltd transformed her husband Terry Reeves, 72, of nearly 45 years into a shuffling dribbling shadow of his former self. She had been caring for him for years, and despite his dementia and some confusion, he was still mobile enough to bound up and down the stairs of the family's two storey home. Lillian Reeves detailed how a six week stay in respite care at a nursing home left her husband drooling and incontinent. Credit:Julie Power Mr Gray told the commission that it was "uncontroversial" that Mr Reeves had walked into the facility a mobile man, with only a degree of difficult around toileting" and left in a "severely de-conditioned state with very limited mobility".

Mrs Reeves blamed the facility for giving her husband the anti-psychotic risperidone, a drug used to treat patients who are irritable, anxious and restless, but his reaction had been alarming. Loading "He was almost unconscious. So I never did that again, " she said. Given her previous experience, she said she would never have given the okay for him to be restrained with risperidone. A national study estimated two thirds of residents were regularly taking psychotropic medications, while an international study estimated a third of dementia patients were prescribed these drugs.

The Reeves family was so concerned about Mr Reeves' plummeting health that they pulled him out of respite early. "It took five days" before he stopped shuffling. "It was because he was coming off the medications. One day he lay on the floor. We think it was withdrawals," Mrs Reeves said. He has now moved into another facility. "It is wonderful, they don't restrain, they don't medicate, he is free to walk around the gardens, but he never came back 100 per cent," Mrs Reeves said. On Monday, Ms Dassanayake detailed the neglect and lack of respect suffered by her mother who ended up in hospital dehydrated with bed sores. This treatment was not limited to one aged care facility. It occurred at three nursing homes, as Ms Dassanayake attempted to find a better home for her mother.