An aged care home was not warned that a new resident had stabbed his de facto wife to death just over two years earlier. Dennis Wakefield killed partner Beth Staveley and tried to take his own life at the couple’s Southport home in June 2014. He was charged with murder but was found in the Mental Health Court to be of unsound mind. The 75-year-old was confined to The Park Centre for Mental Health, a state-run psychiatric hospital in Brisbane’s west. But in August he was accepted into the Riverview Gardens Aged Care Plus Centre in Ipswich, with the help of Queensland Health. The Salvation Army facility only discovered Wakefield’s history just over a week ago and immediately relocated him. The case has raised questions about the adequacy of Queensland Health disclosures about the history of mental health patients. Salvation Army Aged Care Plus chief executive Sharon Callister said the centre was “made aware of information concerning a resident … which was not disclosed upon their admission” last Thursday.
