Girl left unwatched by agency worker at psychiatric unit was unlawfully killed, inquest finds | UK news

A 14 -year -old vulnerable girl was illegally killed when an agency support worker failed to observe her in a secure psychiatric unit, a investigation jury concluded.

The worker, who used a false identity, left Ruth SzymankiewiWiCy alone even if she had complex mental health problems and was deemed to monitor constant because she was a risk of suicide.

Ruth was able to get back into his room and injured himself at the Huntercombe private hospital near Taplow in the Buckinghamshire on February 12, 2022. She died two days later.

During the investigation, it appeared that the worker, who passed under the stolen identity Ebo Acoumpong, had never worked in any hospital before the day he was responsible for observing Ruth and received no enthronement before his quarter of work.

The Beaconsfield jury learned that the Ruth district was usually severely short and has completed highly by temporary agency staff like Acoumpong.

The parents of Ruth, Kate and Mark Szymankiewicz, a general practitioner and a consultant surgeon, said during the investigation that Ruth had never received the therapeutic care she needed.

They were devastated that the unit was more than 70 miles from their Wiltshire house, leaving Ruth isolated and desperate. The couple also expressed their concern that Ruth has unhindered access to their mobile phone and were able to seek suicide.

Although Ruth died in 2022, health experts told the Guardian that many of the problems concerning the use of agency staff and the shortage of intensive psychiatric care units (PICU) for children and young people were still a huge problem.

Andrew Molodynski, consultant psychiatrist at Oxford Health Nhs Foundation Trust, said that there was a “gap of responsibility” on the training and verification of agency staff.

He said that they are often mental health hospitalization units, with the most high -risk people, who were most counting on agency staff, especially when they had patients like Ruth needing individual supervision.

He said it was a “toxic wrestling … you find yourself with very few people who know the service and know the patients”.

MININE PATEL, Associate Director of Policy and Campaigns to the Mental Health Charitable, said that the case of RUTH was “an example of a clear cut of the many systemic problems in our mental health hospitals”.

He said: “Excessive dependence on agency staff can compromise patient safety, quality of care and, in the worst cases, lead to prejudices or loss of serious lives.”

During the survey, Dr. Gillian Combe, clinical director of the supplier group who ordered the placement of Ruth, said that the sub-effet seen in Huntercombe still existed.

She expressed her frustration at the rules in England which make construction difficult to build new NHS units, which means that groups of suppliers must count on the sending of patients to private units.

Combe said that this situation had occurred after the changes of Andrew Lansley at the NHS – described by some as a “creeping privatization” – when he was secretary of conservative health from 2010 to 2012. She said that there was no picu for children and young people across the southwest of England.

The charity survey, which supported Ruth’s family, expressed itself that the investigation focuses on individual failures rather than systemic care such as the lack of therapeutic care for children, inadequate staff training and investments outside the area.

He said: “The objective fell on individual failures, and not on the deeply rooted problems that afflict HunteCombe and the mental health services of children on a national scale. Until we face these children, more children like Ruth will die.”

Ian Wade KC, an assistant coroner, said that there had been an “abject failure” by Acheampong to observe Ruth.

Dr. Amit Chatterjee, the head doctor of Active Care Group, who owned and directed Huntercombe, told the investigation that the company had worked hard to improve recruitment and its induction process.

Huntercombe closed, but Chatterjee said that the company had strengthened therapeutic care on its current site for young people, Ivetsey Bank Hospital in the Staffordshire.

The investigation learned that after learning that Ruth had died, Acheampong fled from the United Kingdom to Ghana. Thames Valley police said that she knew her true identity but did not have enough evidence to try to recover it.

The use of agency staff in mental health circles has been cited as a major problem in many criticisms and investigation conclusions. In the case of Lily Lucas, a 28 -year -old woman who died in 2022 excessive consumption of liquid caused by schizophrenia, an NHS review found that certain agency nurses in her private neighborhood did not know how to use 999.

An investigation into the death of Sophie Alderman, 27, who committed suicide in a mental health hospital in 2022, revealed that there was a strong dependence on agency staff, and only two nurses qualified in permanent mental health were in the neighborhood at the time.

A report by the Mental Health Quality Quality Commission report said patients have described agency staff as “non -friendly” and “less attentive” to patients and detrimental to morale among permanent staff.