A carer is being investigated after she was caught on camera apparently spitting on her patient’s doorstep following a row over a damaged wall.
The patient, who lives in Strood, says the incident has left her feeling “disrespected” and as if she was “disgusting”.
Also in today’s podcast, a desperate appeal has been issued to pregnant women in Kent and Medway urging them to come forward for a whooping cough jab following the deaths of eight babies.
You can hear from the Deputy Director of Public Health at Kent County Council who says infants who are too young to get their own vaccinations are at the greatest risk.
A court has heard how a Ramsgate man stole his girlfriend's family heirlooms and cash from her son to fund a gambling addition.
The victim began noticing jewellery mysteriously disappearing from their home over the course of seven months.
The date for a controversial plaza to be cleared from a town’s seafront has been announced.
The project, which sparked backlash from the community, has seen the creation of a pedestrianised zone - but officials have now confirmed the road will be reopened to traffic.
And, a former bar in Gravesend is set to reopen as pub again a year after it closed down to be converted into a supermarket.
Bosses say they've changed their mind, and the town needs its sports bar back.
It's nearly time for fun at Cossington Park Sports Centre. The family-friendly, inclusive pool and sports centre from Medway opening on Wednesday the 17th of July with a brand-new fun pool, weight machine and flume, four-lane swimming pool and splash pool for little ones, multi-purpose dance and fitness studio with children's party area, and a state-of-the-art gym. The Countdown is on! Sign up to a membership and find out more at medway.gov.uk/cosingtonpark. Kent Online News. News You Can Trust. This is the Kent Online Podcast. Kate Faulkner. Hello. Hope you're OK. Thank you for downloading today's podcast on Thursday, June 13th. Coming up, we'll hear from the Deputy Director of Public Health from Kent County Council amid a spike in whooping-off cases around the county, as well as from a teenager from Seven Oaks, who's made it through to the finals of the Befda Young Game Designer Awards. But first, taking a look at our top story, a carer is being investigated after she was caught on camera, apparently spitting on her Strewd patient's doorstep, following an argument over a damaged wall. The victim says it was disgusting, and it's left her feeling disrespected. Lucy has been following this story for the Kent Online Podcast. Lucy, how did this all unfold? Well, 43-year-old former Librarian Nargis Farqui is disabled and has several health conditions, which affect her spine and back. She has carers to her home three times a day to help her with her day-to-day tasks. During one of those visits, on June 1st, the carer from domiciliary care experts clipped the front garden wall with her car, causing part of it to break away. It was captured on CCTV and chose the woman placing the bricks back into position before driving away. And what happened when Nargis confronted her about it? Nargis wanted to know why she hadn't been told about what had happened and threatened to report the damage. It's at this point, Nargis says the carer became very mad and doorbell camera footage captured the moment she drew her head back and intentionally spat on the handrails outside the front door. And how is this left Nargis feeling? Well, she says it's really affected her as she relies on her carers and doesn't feel this behaviour is professional. She has reported both incidents to the police, care quality commission, Medway Council, as well as domiciliary care experts. The company says the work has been removed from the rotor and they are conducting a very thorough investigation. They've apologised directly to Ms Farcree and will take any action that is appropriate. Thanks, Lucy. Police officers have also confirmed they're making inquiries into reports of criminal damage and alleged abusive behaviour at the property. Kent Online News A chatamans been jailed for than 20 years after being found guilty of serious sex offences against a child. Billy Ward carried out the crimes between January 2016 and October 2022. The 40-year-old from Castle Road denied the charges but was convicted following a trial. Police and paramedics have been called after a pupil was hit by a car outside a secondary school in Ashford. It calls delays for drivers on Fabbisham Road near Tower School earlier this morning. It's unclear how badly they were hurt. Armed police have been called to a busy road near Folkston following reports of a man with a weapon. Officers searched a vehicle on Cheriton High Street yesterday evening but didn't find anything. It's believed to have been a false alarm. Two Kent men have been jailed following an investigation into county lines, drugs, gangs. Police tracked a phone number being used to sell cocaine and heroin across the Medway towns and later executed a search warrant on a property in Sterling Close in Rochester. They found a large knife and 5,000 pounds in cash. A third man was also charged and received a suspended sentence. A chatamans been charged after a woman was allegedly sexually assaulted on a bus in Scotland. The 22-year-old is accused of touching the woman inappropriately over her clothing. She walked past him in May this year. It was arrested after officers reviewed CCTV footage and has been released on bail ahead of a hearing in September. A man will appear in court next month in connection with a robbery in Folkston. Michael McDonough is accused of threatening his victim of property in Brockman Road on June 4th before taking his bank card, the 38-year-old, who has no fixed address will remain in custody until the hearing. An appeal has gone out to find the owners of two stolen bikes more than two months after they were seized by police. The bikes were recovered from a property in Tundbridge Wells in April, but investigators have been unable to trace them to their original owner. We've shared a picture of them at Kent Online. Kent Online News. There's an urgent appeal for pregnant women in Kent to get vaccinated against Hooping Cough. Cases across England are on the rise and eight babies died from the bacterial infection between January and April. Ellen Schwartz, his deputy director of public health at Kent County Council and says the risks can be prevented. It is concerning. There is a rise nationally of Hooping Cough cases. So, Hooping Cough usually has these peaks every three to five years. But this year, we have seen this proportionately high numbers of cases nationally. So, this is why I'm really grateful for the opportunity to talk to you, to just basically raise awareness of this illness. So, as the name says, it's about a cough. It's a quite severe cough, where in between times people have to kind of struggle to take breath in. And that creates this like whooping sound. It's quite characteristic. And it can affect anyone, but it is particularly dangerous for young babies. And so, it starts with a mild disease for about a week. And then this cough develops. And it's particularly significant during the night, when you have these kind of episodes of cough, and people don't seem to be able to stop coughing. And in between times, the sharp inbreath is struggling in intake of breath. And you mentioned that, sorry, I was just going to ask about the cases. Obviously, we're seeing it spike nationwide. Is that something that's being reflected across Kent as well? Cases across the county are much higher than they should be. It is really so we get the data usually at a national level, and that is a reflected nationwide, everywhere really. And sadly, in the last, in the first three months of this year, a few or four months, have been eight cases of babies dying from Patassis. So, the name of the clinical name of the diseases, Patassis. So, what happens is that, so normally, we immunize, we vaccinate, babies as part of their first, their very first routine immunization at eight weeks. And it's really important, if there are any kind of parents out there or carers, make sure that your child is immunized at this kind of normal stage of immunization. But then the critical thing is that in the very first weeks of life, the babies are not protected. The way to work around is that we are inviting pregnant mothers to get immunized. And then the antibodies go through the placenta, basically, into the baby and protect the baby indirectly. So, it's really important. And this is the kind of main focus of this conversation, is to really say, if you're pregnant, make sure you're immunized to protect yourself and your baby from who they call. Jabs are also being offered to young children if they've missed it. A court said how a gambling addict from Thanat stole his partner's jewelry and pawned it for money to feed his habit. Damon Coulson also took 100 pounds from his girlfriend's son and admitted five shoplifting offenses. The 44-year-old from Margate Road in Ramsgate has been given a suspended sentence in order to attend 20 rehab sessions. The landlords of a Rochester pub are threatening to release CCTV footage after an ornamental monkey was stolen from their pub garden. Bosses at the rising sun say the golden statue has sent to mental value and was taken over the weekend. They say the culprit has been caught red-handed on camera, but has the opportunity to bring it back before they're exposed. Now, this has been one of our most red stories online today. A bar in Gravesand is set to open as a pub again a year after it closed down to be converted into a supermarket. The king's head sports bar in King Street shut last March. Bosses put it down to the town's deterioration and they've been serving groceries. Now they've decided to turn it back into a bar. It'll undergo a £150,000 refurb to be ready to welcome customers again this September. A large pile of rubbish has been dumped in a country lane in South Darranth in an area the villagers say is becoming a big problem. The black sacks, broken crates and a wooden pallet were left between Rabbits Road and Canada Farm earlier this week. Residents say it's happening around once a month. Kent Online News A Kent charity is launching a campaign to make sure children don't go hungry this summer. Nourish, which is based in Tundridge Wells, already provides food supplies, but sees a rise in referrals for help during the school holidays. They're planning to provide parcels, which include the basics, but also treats like cereal bars, sandwich fillings, meatballs and hot dogs. Don Stanford is Operations Director. Nourish is the Community Food Bank for Tundridge Wells. We support clients throughout the borough and beyond with food support, delivered food parcels to their home, also access to energy support for those households struggling to eat or eat and other smaller projects where we can and linking up with other charities within our borough and community to sign post clients for additional support or something that meets their needs. We would love for people to get behind the holiday hunger campaign. We will take whatever you can give, so if you are a business and you want to sponsor something tangible and a certain amount of families, we can work out how much it costs to provide that extra parcel and you could sponsor somebody for a week, for six weeks, one family, two families, whatever. If you want to donate the items that we put in those bags, we will be posting them on socials, it's on our campaign. There is a list of extra items that we put in and these are on top of our normal donations, which obviously are just as important during the summer as every other week. If you want to sponsor financially, you can do it through our website. We will take whatever support we can get and we'd really like as many people to get behind us on this. It's so important to us as a charity, it's so important to our recipients and it's just so important to us as a community. Food budgets are already under a lot of strain and we feel that the households with children that are going to struggle through the holidays could really do with an extra hand, so we will send out along with our normal parcel an additional holiday hunger bag and that bag, that parcel, includes items that can be used to provide a lunch, either a packed lunch if they're going off to childcare, so those childcare costs are offset by spending less on the food or stuff that you can make a lunch with at home, so extra pasta and meatballs and tomato sauce and hot dogs and things like bread and ham and cheese and eggs. All of them put a real extra strain under budgets that are already at bursting point and we know that this is a really big problem this year as much as any other, but we are seeing an increase this year and we're seeing higher levels of desperation from parents and families that just cannot take much more strain. Businesses and groups are being encouraged to collect supplies that will be distributed over the coming months. It's been confirmed a controversial new road layout in Hearne Bay will be removed towards the end of this month. The Plaza project turned part of central parade into a pedestrianised design with a new slower one-way system in the nearby area, roads bosses have now confirmed it will be reopened to traffic on June 28th, but the 20 mile per hour routes will remain. Ongoing road closures on the A26 are set to continue as SGN carry out further emergency gas repairs. Works on Tumbridge Road in Wateringbury have now been extended to June 19th. It follows disruptions earlier this month when the closure clashed with planned waterworks. It comes as essential bridge maintenance will be carried out at the swanley interchange for the next few months. Major work at Junction 3 of the M25 will start on Monday. Drivers are being advised to allow extra time during their journeys and follow the diversions. Kent Online News. A 13 year old boy from Seven Oaks is up for a BAFTA young game designer award. Harry Paul created the game's spelling squirrel for other children at his school to help them with their weekly spelling tests. My game's spelling squirrel is about a squirrel collecting acorn to letters on them and you collect them to make a word that is given to you through audio. And so who is the game aimed at? So is it a children's game first and foremost? Yeah like six to like 12. Okay and what was your inspiration behind the game? So as you were making it what were you what were you trying to build? Well my school asked me to make a spelling game because the children didn't really like learning their spellings and maybe found a bit boring or hard. So they asked me to make a game that would make it funner for the children to learn their spelling. So when I when I heard about it I I I I leap to leap to the challenge and I thought it would be a great use of my skills and a good challenge. Speaking of your skills there how do you how did you learn how to make these games? If somebody said to me Kate can you make a spelling game for children? I would have no idea where to start. How did you know how did you develop the skills? Where did you get that knowledge from? Well I I got I developed my game design skills from courses I went on but I I mainly got gameplay from just playing games and seeing what worked well what didn't really work well just seeing what yeah seeing what worked well in other games. So have you been playing computer games yourself or video games yourself from a young age? Can you remember how old you were when you first started playing and what some of your favourite games were when you were younger? I would have been pretty young maybe like four or five when I started playing games. I used to play Minecraft a lot more my friends because it was it was very easy to play much play with it. I used to play Roblox a lot as well. And I remember reading in the press release as well that this isn't the first time you've been a finalist in this competition. Can you tell me a little bit about your your previous experience with the competition? So last year I made a game called Samurai Turtle which was a 2D platformer like Mario with 20 levels in. And you were a finalist for that one as well. What made it what made you want to come back for the competition for a second year around what what did you love about it? Well the experience was last year was very easy. It was very welcoming to your your people and less confident people. But this year it was a bit different because obviously I had but a better skills because I liked him last year and I was a lot more confident this year. It's been shortlisted in the game making category for this year's event. You can play the game on the BAFTA website before the winners are announced on June 27th. A midway based animal rescue group say they're delighted to see their idea for a cat microchipping scheme adopted nationwide. Under new regulations which came into force on Monday all cat owners must have their pets microchipped before they reached 20 weeks of AIDS just as with dogs Natasha and D. McPhee who run animals lost and found first table the proposal 10 years ago. An adventurer who was paralyzed from the chest down has just finished circumnavigating Britain by boat making two stops in Kent along the way. Jeff Holt called Dover and Chatham as part of the four-week challenge which saw him sail more than 1,800 miles. He hopes it inspires more disabled people to break down barriers and get out onto the water. And a nursing home is celebrating an extraordinary milestone with four Kent residents chalking up and combined 401 years. Cecil Smithway turned 100 earlier this week. Among the guests at his party was 100 year old Joan Allison and 102 year old Margaret Lewis. Pauline Ventress will be 100 next month. She's been speaking to reporter Jerry Warren about the secrets to a long life. I was asked a question recently by the doctor in the hospital and I said I happen to commit no special diet. No I've never think about it. No special exercises. I just always keep going. I've always walked a lot. I don't sort of sit and expect things to come to me. I expect to go shopping. Well maybe that's the secret. I suppose so, yeah. I was the eldest of five children and although my father had a permanent job in those days because once my mother said oh I only wish we had child benefits when I was young. So I think it was probably shortage of money. We never had any spare money for anything. That's a very very on and very big in that way. We were always well looked after because I had good parents but the lack of money meant that we never did any outside jobs because we couldn't say afford beautiful things like that. My first job was in civil service during the war. I had been an evacuee from school and we've gone to South Wales to come out on cheer and at that time I became I suppose 17 and my father got me into a civil service job because it's 18 you are liable to be sent anywhere during the war to do a job in a factory or anywhere. So he didn't want me to do that. So I then became a civil servant. So that was my first job. We, the office I went into was in somebody's house in Whitehall. No, no not Whitehall, the stand. What one piece of advice would you give to your 21 year old self? Make the most of what's wrong? Was it an opportunity offered itself? You can read Jerry's full story at Kent Online. Kent Online, sport. Kenton Dina Asher Smith has won another gold medal at the European Athletics Championships. She was part of the four by 100 meter relay team who finished first in last night's final in Rome. Britain's Keeley Hodgkinson also won gold in the women's 800 meters. It means we finished third in the medal table behind Italy and France and briefly in tennis Emma Radikanu is back in action at the Nottingham Open. Later it's after the 21 year old from Orbington's 6164 victory in the opening round. It's her first match since April. She's taking on Darius Niger of Ukraine. That's all from us today. Thanks ever so much for listening. Don't forget you can follow us on Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok and threads. You can also get the details on the top stories direct to your email each morning via the briefing to sign up. Just head to Kentonline.co.uk. News you can trust. This is the Kent Online Podcast. [BLANK_AUDIO]
