A 14-YEAR-OLD girl who died in hospital after she was left alone by a worker with a fake ID was “unlawfully killed”, a coroner has ruled.
Ruth Szymankiewicz was left alone at a children’s mental health ward by an inexperienced agency worker who later fled the country.
PARuth was able to shut herself in her bedroom at a hospital’s psychiatric intensive care unit[/caption]
Ruth, from Salisbury, was being treated for an eating disorder at Huntercombe Hospital in Berkshire.
On February 12 2022, she was placed under strict one-to-one observation when she was left on her own by a member of staff responsible for watching her.
Ruth was able to shut herself in her bedroom at the hospital’s psychiatric intensive care unit – also known as Thames ward – where she self-harmed.
Around 15 minutes passed before a nurse discovered the teenage girl and raised the alarm.
She sadly died two days later at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.
The agency worker watching her was a man then known as Ebo Acheampong, and he had never worked in a psychiatric hospital environment before coming to Huntercombe on that day for his first shift.
A police investigation later found he was hired by the Platinum agency – which supplied staff for Huntercombe Hospital – under a false name.
Mr Acheampong never returned to work at the hospital following the incident and fled the UK for Ghana.
Thames Valley Police said they knew his real identity but did not have enough evidence to bring him back to the UK.
Today, an inquest jury sitting at Buckinghamshire Coroner’s Court in Beaconsfield returned a conclusion of unlawful killing.
Jurors could be seen crying as they recorded their conclusion, as well as the coroner and members of the family.
‘SHE WANTED TO MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE’
Ruth’s parents Kate and Mark Szymankiewicz – a GP and a consultant surgeon – were devastated that their daughter was placed at a ward more than 70 miles away from their home in Wiltshire.
She was left isolated, and they were concerned she had unlimited access to her phone and could research suicide.
Her dad said Ruth was “punished not helped or supported” at the hospital.
And mum Kate said the system “failed” her daughter, leaving her without any “emotional support system”.
She told the inquest she was told Ruth was only allowed 20 minutes outside a day, which she found “hard to believe” as “even prisoners get one hour”.
Kate slammed Ruth’s treatment as “terrible” and said her daughter “wanted to make the world a better place”.
“Our belief is that the things that Ruth had to endure on a daily basis would have felt like torture and were something she would do anything to escape.”
Ruth had started secondary school in September 2019, but found the environment a challenge.
When she was 13, she developed tics, including hitting herself and involuntarily swearing, and it was thought she might have Tourette syndrome.
Her parents became worried, and noticed Ruth was “very scared” of eating.
When Ruth was admitted to hospital in 2021, her parents felt they “lost their parental rights” and didn’t have a “real say” in her care.
Kate and Mark called for families to be more involved to improve the quality of care in cases like Ruth’s, where vulnerable kids need “patience, love, and a cuddle”.
WARD WAS MISSING HALF ITS STAFF
The court heard the ward was missing at least half of its staff on the day Ruth, who had self harmed several times in the past, was left unsupervised.
It was heard that Mr Acheampong was originally working on a different ward, but was asked to join the team on Thames ward because they were so short-staffed nurses could not go on breaks.
A risk management form had been filed on the day by Michelle Hancey – a support worker with 18 years’ experience at Huntercombe – who raised concerns the Thames ward team would “fail to monitor patients on prescribed special observation because of staff shortage”.
During the inquest, jurors were shown CCTV footage of the moment Mr Acheampong left Rush unsupervised while she sat in the ward’s lounge watching TV, enabling her to leave the room.
She had been placed on the “level three observation” plan following earlier incidents of self-harm – meaning she had to be kept within eyesight at all times.
In the footage, Mr Acheampong can be seen leaving the room repeatedly – at first only for seconds at a time, then for two minutes – prompting the teenager to walk up to the door and look into the lobby, seemingly waiting for the opportunity to leave the room.
She was last captured on CCTV walking out of the ward’s day room “completely on her own” before going straight to her bedroom and closing the door behind her, coroner Ian Wade KC told the inquest.
Huntercombe Hospital had been inspected twice by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) prior to the incident, the inquest previously heard.
It was rated as “overall inadequate” in a CQC report dated February 2021.
Active Care Group, which owned Huntercombe at the time of Ruth’s death, has since closed the facility.
The charity Inquest, which supported Rush’s family, said: “The focus has fallen on individual failures, not the deep-rooted issues plaguing Huntercombe and children’s mental health services nationally.
“Until we face those head-on, more children like Ruth will die.”
AlamyRuth was being treated for an eating disorder at Huntercombe Hospital in Berkshire[/caption]
If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please call the Samaritans for free on 116123.
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