High court condemns lack of provisions in UK for suicidal teenager
A really tragic story and one which I feature because it highlights how very difficult it is to find suitable local accommodation for people with these challenges in rural settings. I know personally of a Nottinghamshire family who have a child based at a Kent facility in this context. This all reminds us that whilst Covid-19 continues to consume all our thinking there are many other pressing challenges a number of which are being exacerbated by the lack of scope to focus on them at the current time.
Not a single secure bed was available anywhere in the UK last week for a suicidal teenager, according to a high court ruling that highlights the chronic shortage of accommodation to support the country’s most vulnerable children.
Mr Justice MacDonald said the lack of places – partly caused by Covid-19 restrictions – left him facing a “stark choice” either to send the 16-year-old girl to an unregulated placement – meaning she would not inspected – or into the community “where she will almost certainly cause herself possibly fatal harm”.
MacDonald said he had no option but to choose the former in his damning judgment, which began with the Nelson Mandela quote: “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”
The lack of secure placements emerged when Lancashire county council sought a place for the girl after she had spent a period on an adult mental health ward where she had threatened to abscond, kill herself and kill staff. A search for a place in an NHS child and adolescent mental health psychiatric intensive care unit was also unsuccessful.
In his written ruling, handed down on Friday in the family division of the high court, the judge said the teenager was “in urgent need of a secure placement” but that “as of this morning, no such placement is available anywhere in the United Kingdom” – putting “anywhere” in italics to highlight his apparent incredulity.