Application across the book’s scenarios
| Scenario | Correct non-fatal route |
|---|---|
| Care home resident survives | Consider wilful neglect, assault/GBH, regulated-care and health-and-safety offences, professional discipline and civil negligence according to the facts. |
| Sheltered-housing tenant survives | Separate housing, alarm and care duties; consider negligence, contract, equality, safeguarding, health and safety or regulated care rather than inventing a gross-negligence offence. |
| Unsupported family carer survives | Consider Care Act remedies, forced labour where compelled services and menace of penalty are proved, fraud, harassment, psychiatric injury and employment or regulatory routes. |
| Parent survives separation | Consider family-law remedies, Article 8, negligence for recognised injury, misfeasance, perjury or fraud where their elements exist. Manslaughter cannot apply without death. |
| Community-care failure | Attribute transport, staffing, clinical and commissioning failures to the correct duty-holder and select a recognised route. |
| What would usually be insufficient | Calling conduct gross, proving serious harm alone, or relying on manslaughter terminology where no death occurred. |
England and Wales has no general standalone offence called ‘gross negligence occasioning serious harm’. Gross-negligence manslaughter requires a death. Corporate manslaughter also requires a death. Where a person survives, serious harm must be analysed through a recognised non-fatal offence, regulatory route, safeguarding duty, professional case, Human Rights Act claim or civil negligence.
Denied care
Depending on the facts, deliberate or reckless care denial may engage care-worker or Mental Capacity Act wilful-neglect offences, assault or GBH, health-and-safety law, regulated-care offences, fraud, forced labour or civil negligence. Each route has a different defendant, duty, mental element, causation and harm test.
Child removal
Serious physical or recognised psychiatric injury after removal may support negligence, Article 8 or another route if duty, unlawfulness, causation and damage are proved. Removal under valid authority is not automatically criminal, and harm alone does not establish assault, GBH, child abduction or wilful neglect.
If death later occurs
Investigators must separately test personal gross-negligence manslaughter: a personal duty, breach, an obvious and serious risk of death at the time, causation and conduct so exceptionally bad as to be criminal. A qualifying organisation is tested under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007. Neither offence is automatic after a death.