A SENIOR care worker’s career could be in tatters after an appeal court upheld a conviction for assaulting a 16-year-old autistic girl.

Jacqueline Ludlam, 33, had been fighting to clear her name after Burnley magistrates had earlier found her guilty of battery. Ludlam, a former key worker at a Rossendale care home, had been suspended after she and another staff member used hair removing cream on the girl last June.

The crown had told Burnley Crown Court the appellant had put the cream on the teenager unlawfully, without her mother’s consent and without a risk assessment. Ludlam told the two-day hearing she and the other worker were removing hair for hygiene reasons and she believed she had the mother’s consent.

But Judge Heather Lloyd, sitting with two justices, threw out the appeal against conviction and ordered Ludlam, of Market Street, Shawforth, to pay £150 costs.