A 13-year-old girl at risk of suicide and in the care of Manchester city council has languished in hospital for more than three months due to a lack of suitable placements anywhere in the country.
In a family court hearing which a high court judge unusually directed should be held in public, Mr Justice Poole on Wednesday sanctioned the use of an unregulated, unlawful placement for the teenager. He accepted that since the council had spent many weeks exhaustively searching for a suitable home only to be met with repeated refusals, an unlawful placement was now “the only hope” for the child to be discharged from hospital. The cost of her new placement will be £9,650 a week, the court heard.
