A catalogue of failures led to the death of Jade McGrath, 19, when she was admitted to New Craigs Hospital in Inverness, which has now also formally apologised to her mother. Jade, who had threatened to take her own life, walked out of the hospital unchallenged.
Disinterested staff failed to report her missing for over 45 minutes. They also failed to tell police she was a suicide risk. It was 11 days before her body was found by children playing less than a kilometre from the ward.
Mum Samantha Taylor, who was denied a Fatal Accident Inquiry into Jade’s death, said the family had no option but to take legal action to get justice. She said she will never forgive the staff who failed her daughter.
She said: “I hope they remember this for the rest of their lives. If they had done their jobs properly, Jade would still be here. They need to be held accountable.”
The mum of two, from Carrbridge, near Aviemore, said she was terrified as she watched her teenage daughter’s mental health deteriorate. Jade had struggled after being badly bullied in school and had left aged just 15 without any qualifications.
She was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) in 2018 after Samantha watched a documentary on Amy Winehouse and believed her daughter had the same condition. She said: “Jade could go into a real temper and she could be almost too happy sometimes. It was going to the extremes, not being able to cope with those emotions and lashing out.”
Just seven months later, Jade was admitted to the New Craigs Hospital after phoning her mum claiming she was bleeding from the stomach. Samantha said: “She phoned me saying, ‘My stomach’s bleeding, I’m losing all this blood.’ There was nothing there.
“She was in a terrible state, it was extreme anxiety. She’d been hearing voices telling her that she should die. She was absolutely terrified, jumping up and down on her bed, screaming.”
After a late-night journey to A&E, Jade was admitted to New Craigs on November 26, 2018. Samantha said: “The staff avoided eye contact with me and Jade. They were just dead-eyed, very distant. Not really engaging with us at all.
“There was no compassion. I got the feeling they were judging Jade because of the way she was behaving. I just wanted my daughter to be OK and to get help.”
Samantha visited the next day with Jade’s father Aidan and they tried to speak to the hospital’s psychiatrist. She said: “I sat with Jade and her dad for an hour but the doctor didn’t come.
“I went into the nurses’ office and there were maybe eight nurses all sitting around with the door shut. No one was looking at the patients or paying attention to what was going on in the ward.
“I asked if I could see the doctor. They were quite rude and said he wasn’t here. There were a couple of what looked like security staff sitting in the common room on their phones, texting.
“I had to go back to work so I left Jade with her dad and said, ‘I’ll be back tomorrow. You’ll be OK.’ I gave her a kiss and stroked her hair. I never saw her again. The next time I heard from anyone at that hospital was the day they found her body.”
Jade’s dad Aidan, who is separated from Samantha, had gone to get a coffee the next day during his visit and, when he returned to the ward, Jade had disappeared. Samantha said: “He asked the nurses where Jade was and they didn’t seem to know.
"He said they didn’t seem concerned and for about 10 minutes no one did anything. That 10 minutes was crucial. About 45 minutes later, they called the police.”
An internal review of the case revealed a catalogue of failings by staff, from when Jade was admitted to the hospital to her body being found, including a failure to communicate with family, no risk assessment and no missing persons report found in her file.
The probe found staff did not monitor Jade as closely as they should have when she had a visitor and nobody contacted her family or her consultant after she went missing. It also said that if Jade had tried to leave the hospital, she may have been detained under the mental health act for her own safety but staff had not been monitoring her closely enough.
But Samantha said the hospital’s fatal error was not informing police Jade was of high risk when she went missing. An entry from the hospital records at 8pm the night before Jade disappeared states: “Reports to nursing staff feeling ‘dead’, wants to go to a real hospital ‘to die’.
“Informed that she had tried to electrocute herself with a spoon in the toaster, it didn’t work because ‘I’m already dead, I’m numb’. Also took a knife from the kitchen ‘just in case’, ‘that won’t even work as I’m already dead’.”
Samantha said: “I was in bits, worried sick about where she was. She was in a mental hospital saying that she thought she was already dead and they didn’t think she was a suicide risk?
“It took 11 days for the police to find her body. It wasn’t even the police who found her – it was a group of kids who had been playing nearby. She was within the 1km radius of the hospital which we were told had been searched but they didn’t see her.”
More than three years after Jade’s death, her family received a formal apology from NHS Highland and have settled a legal case against them for negligence.
But Samantha said: “For Jade’s sake, I have to fight and make sure that they are held accountable. I want the staff on that hospital ward the day she went missing and the days when she was in the hospital to know that I hold them personally accountable for the death of my daughter.
“I don’t know their names, I have no way of finding out who they are. I just want them to go to their graves with this on their conscience. Because I do hold them – not as an organisation but as individuals – responsible for what happened.”
The family’s lawyer Jayne Crawford, from Thompsons Solicitors, said: “In spite of criticism detailed in Highland Health Board’s own review of the care they provided to Jade, the family were told there was to be no prosecution and no Fatal Accident Inquiry. The civil claim was the only route to justice which remained.
“The issue of a formal apology acknowledging the part the board’s failings played in Jade’s tragic death, when settling the civil action, is clearly welcome. It is disappointing, however, that it took the raising of court proceedings for this to be issued unequivocally.”
NHS Highland chief executive Pamela Dudek was not available to discuss the case.
A spokesman said: “We are really sorry we did not meet the standards that should have been expected in relation to the tragic case of Jade McGrath. We take seriously our responsibility to learn from such events and carried out a review. We are working on delivering the key recommendations contained within that review.”
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