A JURY has retired to reach a verdict over allegations a senior carer mistreated residents at a Salisbury care home.

Agneskia Sztokmanska is charged with seven counts of ill-treating a person who lacks mental capacity.

The 45-year-old worked at Milford Manor care home in Milford Manor Gardens from 2010 to 2013, becoming a senior carer in 2012.

Today (Thursday) the prosecution and defence made their final submissions at Salisbury Crown Court, with the jury retiring just after 3pm.

Prosecuting Mark Ruffell said: "Getting frustrated, which is perhaps natural, and taking that frustration out on the vulnerable, and the incapacitated, because that is what they are, is inexcusable. They cannot help what they do because they lack the capacity to make decisions. The bottom line is if you can't cope, you shouldn't be doing the job."

He added: "There can be no excuse for carrying out these actions if they happened - there is no lawful way of excusing it."

Defending Francis Abbot said: "Before you criminalise this lady, consider this with a sense of reality. Reality that tells you there were 28 residents at this home - all of whom struggled with dementia - and most of them probably having challenging behaviour as we euphemistically call it. People who wouldn't go to bed, who were incontinent or who refused to go to the toilet. People who have lives and families and because of their affliction were somewhere in a nowhere land."

He added: "Not only did we have that but we have two people on a night shift being asked to take care of these residents and being asked to do the laundry and cleaning as well.

"We all know the people that do this work are paid somewhere near the minimum wage and we all know the whole system would collapse if they weren't any overseas workers."

Recorder Peter Blair QC told the jury there were seven charges on the indictment and there would be seven decisions to make separate verdicts.

He said: "These allegations aren't about this rule or that rule, it's much more fundamental than that.

"You have to ask yourselves whether the defendant ill-treated residents and whether she appreciated that she was inexcusably ill-treating them as she did so."

Sztokmanska of Nursery Road, Salisbury, denies all charges.

The trial continues.