by Craig Borland

A CLYDEBANK woman has admitted stealing money intended to pay her elderly mother's care home bills.

Rosemary Ferguson pocketed the cash in the futile hope that it would solve her own financial problems – but instead it left her on the verge of going to jail.

Ferguson, 49, had been collecting money set aside by West Dunbartonshire Council, to meet the cost of her 82-year-old mother's care.

But when her own husband became too ill to work, she used around £3,000 of the cash to try and meet the shortfall in the family's finances.

Ferguson's crime came to light when staff at her mother's care home noticed they were no longer receiving the fees due to them.

Ferguson, of the town's Durban Avenue, appeared in court for sentencing on August 16, when prosecutor Scott Simpson said there had been an “unwritten agreement” that Ferguson could withdraw the cash from the post office in the town's Dunn Street to pay for her mother's care.

“When this matter came to light,” Mr Simpson said, “the accused indicated to the home that she was experiencing financial difficulties, particularly with her mortgage.

“The accused admitted this was her mother's money and nobody else had access to it.

“She accepted that she had been struggling to run her own home and had used money from that source to assist with that struggle.”

Mr Simpson said the council had stepped in to help ensure that Ferguson's mother could continue to stay in the home.

Sheriff Maxwell Hendry asked Ferguson's solicitor, Brian McGuire: “Surely she realised that if the care home's bills were not being paid, she was putting her own mother's security at risk?”

Mr McGuire said the illness suffered by Ferguson's self-employed husband had “presented considerable difficulty” to the family's finances.

“She lived an entirely proper life until this situation developed,” Mr McGuire told Dumbarton Sheriff Court.

“The last thing she should have done is react in the manner described, but she wasn't thinking straight.”

Mr McGuire said Ferguson had tried to set up a power of attorney to deal with her mother's affairs, and wanted that power to rest with her own daughter, but that her brothers “were not happy” with this idea and no such arrangement was ever established.

Ferguson admitted stealing £3,000 from the Dunn Street post office between December 31, 2014 and June 11, 2015.

Sheriff Hendry told her: “I accept you were facing financial difficulties. But the way you chose to try and deal with those was utterly the wrong approach, and it has taken you very, very low indeed.

“When you start to steal money meant to secure your elderly and unwell mother's safety, security and health, you can't go much lower than that.”

Ferguson was ordered to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work within 12 months – reduced from three hundred hours because of her early plea.

“Three hundred is the maximum,” the sheriff continued, “and three hundred was my starting point.

“If you had a criminal record I would be sending you to prison, but you don't.

“If the order is breached, it will be revoked, and I think at that point I would have no option but to send you to prison.”