Staff ‘literally sleep on their shifts’, wrote girl who died while receiving psychiatric care
A 14-year-old girl who died while she was a patient on a psychiatric unit wrote a letter before she died saying “staff literally sleep on their shifts” and how she thought the hospital should be “shut down”.
Ruth Szymankiewicz died after a self-harm incident at Huntercombe Hospital in Berkshire.
Her note also said there was “non-existent therapy” for patients and an “unsafe number of staff” at the hospital which has since closed down.
And it said that Huntercombe “makes you 10 times worse than when you came”.
Ruth was supposed to have one-to-one supervision but an inquest into her death was told her support worker left her alone at the end of his shift, which was also his first day working at Huntercombe.
It’s been revealed he used a fake passport to falsify his identity, and days after Ruth’s death fled the UK on a plane to Ghana.
The jury was played CCTV footage from the hospital which showed Ruth walking through Thames Ward where she was a patient without anyone accompanying her despite the Level 3 observations requiring someone to watch her at all times.
She is seen entering her bedroom and closing the door behind her. It was during this period of less than 20 minutes that she harmed herself. Staff attempted to resuscitate Ruth, but she died two days later at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.
The inquest heard how Ruth’s support worker had been working on another ward at the hospital but had been moved during the day to her ward because it was short-staffed.
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Clinical team leader Ellesha Brannigan, who worked on Thames Ward, told the inquest how support workers should verbally hand over to each other including handing over a clipboard which contained details about the patient.
Huntercombe Hospital, which was also known as Taplow Manor, was investigated by Sky News and The Independent and in 2023 the unit was shut down.
The inquest continues.
