‘The ward appeared as a correctional facility’: The way my girl was devastated by a medical system meant to support her
I recall distinctly the point it became clear that the behavioral health facility where my teenage daughter was being treated felt like scarcely better than a prison.
Our Ruth had believed fully in the system. We had trusted equally. That faith collapsed when she was moved from our area clinic to the locked facility at Huntercombe.
As we said our goodbyes, she stepped quietly toward the patient transport alongside me and her support worker, who embraced her firmly before saying farewell.
When the vehicle entrance opened at the destination, the stark building dominated the view. We were received and guided up a staircase and through the locked portals, one closing loudly behind us, the person with the keys waiting for the first mechanism to secure before opening the next.
The facility was hermetically sealed and devoid of natural light, with my eyes rapidly tiring from the intense clinical lighting. We were taken to a transparent area that staff called the “observation post”.
The Heartbreaking Separation
Her delicate fingers held my fingers as they stated that I needed to depart. When I objected that I didn’t assist with unpacking, they responded that “parents are not allowed on the unit.”
When I pressed further, they eventually permitted a short look at her room but insisted that I must exit promptly after, as per institutional guidelines.
To this day, I wake up during the night with my heart pounding heavily while revisiting that journey through the common area to Ruth’s designated room. The area contained only a solitary sleeping area and synthetic table, with windows that couldn’t open.
Their voices grew distant as they described how a different attendants would monitor Ruth every hour. I placed her belongings on the ground. Ruth remained seated on the bed, visibly frightened, before I was escorted out.
Abruptly, I was confined beyond the locked entrances, grasping a paper that informed I could visit my daughter for just sixty minutes, only on two occasions each week.
What did I allow to occur?
A Life Cut Short
{Our daughter, our girl, succumbed on 14 February 2022 at evening on the pediatric critical care ward at the hospital in the location. She was rushed there from the mental health facility, an NHS commissioned but for-profit children’s mental health center, where she had been not prevented from fatal self-injury two days earlier.|Our beloved daughter passed away on February 14, 2022 at evening in the {pediatric intensive care unit|