WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

In the nursing home she was independent, cared for and saw the doctor regularly.

Then she moved in with her son and his family and the caring gave way to squalor and neglect. Doctor visits became irregular, the medicine stopped coming. Then came the bed sores and soiled nappies.

By the time she died from bronchial pneumonia, in October 2013 at age 83, she had not seen a doctor or taken prescribed medicine for 16 months, had been unable to speak or swallow for a week and was lying in a filthy bed in a putrid room, all while her son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren lived under the same Melbourne roof.

Throughout this, carer payments kept coming to her daughter-in-law, who had been approved as the elderly woman's carer years earlier despite her own struggles trying to run the household.