Shattered dad launches legal action against Northern Beaches Hospital

Andrew and Diana Gill lost their “smart, sensitive but troubled” 14-year-old son Josh in a car fire last August. Now they are taking legal action against Northern Beaches Hospital.

The parents of a teenage boy who died in a car fire at Dee Why last year have launched criminal action against the Northern Beaches Hospital, alleging a lack of a mental health help meant their son did not receive the care that could have saved his life.

Andrew and Diana Gill lost their “smart, sensitive but troubled” 14-year-old son Josh on August 15, 2021.

The coroner is currently investigating Josh’s death but police believe a fire broke out inside a car — potentially from a lit match — and he could not get out.

In the 18 months before he died Josh became heavily addicted to not only alcohol, but also the high he got inhaling from aerosol cans. His father had gone to bottle shops and convenience stores right across the northern beaches, given the managers his number and asked them to call if his son walked in.

That addiction — spurred on by his mental health issues — led to Josh regularly escaping his family’s North Curl Curl home, sometimes going missing for days on end before inevitably being found unconscious due to alcohol or aerosols by police.

Andrew and Diana Gill sit on a memorial bench for their late son Josh at North Curl Curl Beach. Picture: Richard Dobson

Josh would then be taken by paramedics to the nearest hospital, the Northern Beaches Hospital.

But his parents believe that a lack of a dedicated youth mental health facility at the hospital, combined with him being seen as a “problem child not a child with problems”, meant that he never received the medical aid he needed.

Under a rarely used part of the law, Mr Gill has laid private criminal charges against the Northern Beaches Hospital and the company which owns it, alleging they “neglected a child or young person in his/her care”, according to court documents.

This, they hope, will result in the hospital improving the mental health facilities on offer for the more than 60,000 children in the area — and ensure they get justice for Josh.

“I feel very guilty about what happened to Josh, I’m his dad, if there’s any blame it’s on me, so I’m going to use that to do the right thing and make people accountable where they should be accountable,” Mr Gill told The Daily Telegraph on the six-month anniversary of his son’s death.

“As parents, we can only do so much, we needed help … we tried, we really did.

“The hospital had the legal right to do something, the legal responsibility to do something, and they neglected that.

“Josh, he was a good man. He had his demons, but he was a good young man.

“He definitely didn’t deserve to die in the manner and circumstances in which he did.

“If we can prevent that happening to other families then we will do that, then absolutely we’ll go to the ends of the earth so no family has to go through what we went through, so no kid has to go through what he went through.”

Mr and Mrs Gill are hoping no other families will have to experience the pain they have. Picture: Richard Dobson

14 year old Josh Gill.

The legal action launched by Mr Gill will first be heard in Manly Local Court on Friday, February 24.

But it will not see them benefit financially, instead the Northern Beaches Hospital and its holding company would face a fine if convicted.

Mr and Mrs Gill say Josh’s struggles began not long after he turned 13.

When he began to run away from home they tried deadlocking doors and windows but Josh then began to go missing from Cromer High School.

His parents took his phone away but all it meant was when he vanished they had no way of contacting him.

They checked him into a private rehab facility but it was four hours away and only a temporary help. Efforts to get him into youth mental health facilities at other hospitals saw them turned away without any reason.

Josh Gill died in a car fire in Dee Why.

His parents have now launched criminal proceedings against the Northern Beaches Hospital.

Locally, the Northern Beaches Hospital only offers 16 hours per week of on-site mental health support for all young patients in the area.

“We have this concept called ‘aged care’. If a family gets to a point where they can’t care for that (elderly) person, there are aged care homes,” Mr Gill said.

“There’s no such thing as ‘young care’, and why shouldn’t there be?”

Four days before his death Josh had again been picked up by police. As part of his legal case Mr Gill obtained documents which showed Josh was taken to hospital in handcuffs and with dried blood all over his face and down his legs, having banged his head inside a police cell and become unconscious while in custody.

Despite the seriousness of that incident, and the fact he had been admitted to hospital in each of the six months preceding his death, the hospital did not conduct a mental health assessment and Josh went back into police custody.

The hospital also did not call either parent to tell them their son was there, they allege.

“I just naturally thought when the police took him to that hospital, he would have absolutely been taken in under the mental health act of New South Wales,” Mr Gill said.

“(He needed to be) somewhere where he could be forcibly refused alcohol and other substances, that’s what he needed for a little while, and that hospital had the toolkit to do that that night.

“We don’t blame the staff that work there, I think that’s very important, they’re run off their feet.”

A spokeswoman for the Northern Beaches Hospital said they could not comment with the matter before the courts.

The Daily Telegraph also contacted Northern Sydney Local Health District and NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard for comment, who were also both unable to comment.

A GoFundMe page has been set up in support of Mr and Mrs Gill.

Do you have a similar story? Email: [e-mail]