Australian 15-Year-Old Foster Child Found Hanged

“A teenager who hanged himself in his foster family’s backyard may not have made the decision to commit suicide if he was removed from his mother’s care earlier, evidence at the inquest into his death has suggested.

The inquest heard the 15-year-old indigenous boy, who was found hanged in his backyard in a regional West Australian town in 2010, experienced “prolonged exposure to abuse and neglect as an infant”. This abuse contributed to the teen’s impulsivity in decision making.

The findings made by Coroner Evelyn Vicker were released on Friday.

The child was placed in the care of what is now known as the Department for Child Protection and Family Support at the age of two years, following an early life surrounded by domestic violence. His mother experienced homelessness and issues with alcohol.

The boy’s placement in state care came after more than 20 incidents which the department was made aware of, including one when he was hospitalised for a fractured skull at just seven weeks old.

At two he was placed in a “cottage style care facility” and Ms Vicker noted that by the time the boy was four years old “he had effectively received no stable parental input”.

It was at this time that the boy was placed in a foster home.

On the day of his death, the teenager had been spoken to by a friend’s mother and his foster mother about getting up to “mischief by going out at night on sleepovers”.

His foster mother had also spoken to him about her concern that he had a girlfriend and the couple “were both so young”.

In Ms Vickers’ findings she said the teenager “reacted by blaming himself for making wrong or bad decisions”.

After the conversation with his foster mother, she could hear “him remonstrating with himself to the extent she asked to be careful of himself and the furniture”.

She thought he needed space, and when she went to get him for dinner and he was not in his room she was not concerned at his absence because in the past when he had been angry he would go for a run around the oval to get it out of his system, the hearing was told.

His foster parents became concerned when the boy did not return that night and they contacted the department and the police.

The following day his foster father found the boy dead in the backyard.

Child psychiatrist Dr Jillian Spencer told the inquest the boy “likely suffered a higher degree of impulsivity and poorer problem solving derived from his cognitive executive system deficits due to his prolonged exposure to abuse and neglect as an infant”.

Ms Vicker found that “the experiences he suffered during infancy would have elevated his arousal and irritability response to stressful situations and given him much lesser tolerance and impulse control to develop resilience to life’s normal stressors”.

Ms Vicker found the boy’s foster placement was interrupted when one of the boy’s older brothers was also placed with the foster family temporarily, that he experienced some sleep disrputions and that there was sometimes friction in the household because he “resisted boundaries imposed by his placement”.

But the Coroneralso  found that overall he had expressed love for his foster parents and was progressing well through adolescence.

“I am satisfied the Department, through the [foster family] provided [the boy] with the best possible supervision, treatment and care, despite which he died by way of suicide,” she said.

“The Department accepts, that with the current state of knowledge of the effects of a non-responsive relationship on the infant brain, ideally a child like [the boy] would have been removed from an unsafe environment immediately it was perceived it was unsafe and continuing to be unsafe”.

However Ms Vicker said there were a number of factors that complicated such matters.

“Unfortunately that is not the end of the matter for the Department because the Department is then faced with the difficulty of finding appropriate safe and responsive care for its infant children. It is required to do so by legislation, but the practicalities of safe, appropriate and responsive care, are daunting,” she said.

“The Department is not in an ideal situation to be able to provide that type of care to the numbers of children who require their protection.

“Nevertheless they are charged with that duty on behalf of the community and, with the advent of more understanding, the Department is seeking expert input to formulate programs and modules for the training of those prepared to be foster parents for these extremely vulnerable chidlren”.

Ms Vicker said she would not make any reccomendations based on this inquest as “nurturing of abused children and their later appropriate care during development is a fairly new area of endeavour, and there are not always the resources to provide perfect care to many of the children who need it.”  ”

 

WA foster teen may not have suicided if taken from mother earlier

[WAnews 11/7/14 by Aleisha Orr]

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