'No risk of self-harm': the official verdict on the youngest child to die in
penal custody
By Ian Herbert
Published: 02 May 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article2502083.ece
The youngest child to die in custody in Britain was not recognised as a
suicide risk in reports by social workers, despite having been admitted to
hospital nine times after harming himself.
An inquest into the death of Adam Rickwood was told yesterday that
magistrates who sent the 14-year-old into custody were told in a
pre-sentencing report that he constituted "no risk of self-harm".
The decision to send him to Hassockfield secure training centre near
Consett, Co Durham, also drew on the results of a form completed by
Lancashire County Council's youth offending team which indicated that Adam
had had no contact with mental services, had received no kind of mental
diagnosis and had never harmed himself.
In fact, the boy had been in hospital seven times after repeatedly
overdosing on alcohol/drug mixes and cutting his wrists twice. Lancashire
County Council's director of children's integrated services, Gill Rigg, said
Adam's mental health record was the "key, relevant factor" in determining
whether he should have been in custody at all. "I accept that was a very
critical and essential piece of information that should have been on [the]
form," she told the inquest at Chester-le-Street magistrates' court, Co
Durham.
Adam's despair at being sent to a secure unit 150 miles from home was
evident in his last letter to his mother and stepfather, Carol and John
Pounder, which was read to the jury. "I need to be at home," he wrote. "If I
could have the chance to be at home and with my family I will never get in
trouble again in my life. I will do anything to be with you's [sic] but if
people try to stop that I will flip."
The inquest heard that Adam, from Burnley, Lancashire, was a profoundly
vulnerable child who had been known to social services from the age of three
and had been referred to Lancashire's child and adolescent mental health
unit.
He seemed to respond to those who found time for him, particularly his
paternal grandfather, who was wheelchair-bound. "He used to lie in bed with
granddad, watching TV [and] eating sweets [with him]. They shared
everything," Mrs Pounder told the jury.
It was after his grandfather's death that Adam, then 11, entered a spiral of
decline. He fell in with a group of older boys, took cannabis, was convicted
of burglary and had been excluded from school. He was remanded into custody
after being charged with wounding a man in Burnley - a claim that had been
withdrawn before he died.
An absence of secure accommodation meant he was temporarily sent to the
local Elm Tree children's home - a private establishment with a high ratio
of staff to children, where he flourished. But the cost to the council of
keeping him there meant he was removed when a secure unit place became
available at one of the relatively new "training centres" - which bear more
resemblance to prisonsand have fewer social work staff.
When Adam first rang his mother from the secure unit, he was desolate. "He
was really upset and said he hated being away from home. I [told him] I had
warned him he would end up going away one day, and that he had to calm
down," Mrs Pounder said.
She made the 300-mile trip twice-weekly to see him, but Adam indicated he
would harm himself after they had a meeting with his social worker and a
member of staff at Hassockfield. Mrs Pounder said: "I told [Hassockfield]
what he had said, [voiced] my concerns and I was told not to worry; that
Adam would be under constant watch."
In their last telephone conversation, on 8 August 2004, Adam had happily
discussed his anticipated return home, following the retraction of the
wounding allegation. But at 9.30pm that evening, his mother received a call
from Hassockfield to say that Adam had been in an altercation with staff in
which, she told the jury, he had been "constrained either by the twisting or
squeezing of his nose".
She was told her son would not speak to her that evening. At 3.20am the
following morning police officers contacted her to reveal he had hanged
himself with his bootlaces.
"I asked how often Adam had been checked and I was told it was every 15
minutes," she said. "He had self-harmed before but he always wanted to be
found.It was only ever a cry for help."
The inquest continues.
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