A Bradford care home manager has been jailed for plundering more than £21,000 from the bank accounts of vulnerable residents with learning disabilities.

Susan Taylor abused her position of trust as operations manager at the Rye Hill private nursing home in Park Drive, Heaton, Bradford, over a three-year period because of debts, drugs and alcohol.

Taylor, 52, a grandmother of Huddersfield Road, Bradford, was locked up for 20 months at Bradford Crown Court yesterday after pleading guilty to false accounting between December, 2007, and December, 2010.

The court was told that Taylor’s bosses, Voyage care services, had closed the home and paid back all the residents.

Judge John Potter told Taylor: “It is a tragedy for you to find yourself sentenced for the first time in your life to an inevitable custodial sentence.”

The court was told that Taylor had held her post at the home for up to eight years.

In December 2010, she rang her employers in “a desperately distraught state” confessing that she had been “dipping in and out of money for residents”.

Prosecutor Richard Smith said Taylor resigned over the phone and handed herself into the police.

She told of spiralling debts and loans and drug and alcohol problems.

Mr Smith said £43,000 was missing from the nine residents at the home.

Taylor admitted taking £21,210 from seven residents and that had been accepted by the Crown.

The court heard that Taylor plundered bank accounts and altered cheque book stubs to cover her tracks.

Her solicitor, Anne-Marie Hutton said she knew she was going to prison.

“She accepts that she has breached the trust placed in her by her employers in an appalling way,” said Miss Hutton.

The money did not go on high living but on paying off debts for herself and her family. Taylor had a previously good work record and had never been in trouble before.

Judge Potter said she acted out of greed when she abused her position of trust to plunder the bank accounts of vulnerable victims whose care was entrusted to her.

After the case, Detective Constable Chris Hakes said: “We welcome the conviction of Susan Taylor today for what was a serious breach of the trust of vulnerable people in her care.

“Over a period of time, Taylor repeatedly stole from residents to fund her own lifestyle, abusing her position and betraying the trust of their families who believed their loved ones were being cared for.”