Teen’s ‘nightmare’ spiral in state care as coroner details drug abuse concerns
The loving parents of a teenager who died after years in state care say the system failed their son.
South East
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A teenager whose mental health problems and drug abuse spiralled out of control while in state care died of a heroin overdose just months after his eighteenth birthday,
Coroner Simon Harris on Tuesday detailed how the teen, 18, was able to access drugs for years while in the care of the Victorian government.
The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had been living in residential care facilities since he was 15, and was formally placed into the care of the secretary of the troubled department of families fairness and housing just before he turned 17.
Despite the concerns of the teenager’s “loving, dedicated and resourceful parents”, the department failed to stop him falling in with a peer group of youth criminals, with whom he committed serious crimes, including carjackings and assaults.
“He largely stopped attending school and taking the medications prescribed by (his psychiatrist),” Coroner Harris said.
“While in residential care, (he) started ‘chroming’, overdosed on Xanax and alcohol, and self-harmed by cutting his arms, requiring hospitalisation on a number of occasions.”
The boy’s mother said seeing her son’s plight was “a parent’s worst nightmare”.
The boy’s father, echoed those concerns in a statement to the Coroners Court, raising particular concerns about Victoria’s residential care system, which exposed his son to a “negative peer group”.
A coronial investigation found the teen and other young people were abusing drugs at a semi-independent facility in the months before his eighteenth birthday.
After he turned 18, the teen was regularly abusing drugs — mostly nitrous oxide canisters, known as “nangs” — which he purchased while living at an NDIS-funded home with around-the-clock carers.
An NDIS worker drove the teen to the Cranbourne North Woolworths the day before he died, with the teenager hiding “hiding something in a white plastic bag behind his back” when he returned to the carer’s car.
A police analysis of his phone found he had been conducted Google searches including “how long does heroin last”, “is sleeping on heroin dangerous”, “how long does heroin snorted take to kick in”, “heroin safety for first time user”, “does heroin make you vomit”, and “heroin breathing problem death”.
Coroner Harris said he was unable to investigate many of the suspected shortcomings the teen’s mother said her son was subject to, because they were not directly related to his death.
The mother’s concerns revolved around one of the teen’s little-understood mental health conditions, Pathological Demand Avoidance.
“The limitations on this jurisdiction sometimes lead to the result that concerns raised by families are not able to be investigated because they are not sufficiently connected with the cause and circumstances of their loved one’s death,” he said.
Coronial investigators said the teen’s death appeared to have been a “tragic outcome of … culminating factors” and concluded there was “no clear point in time when his death may have been prevented”.
Mr Harris said the teen was remembered as a “brave and spirited person, who lived life with intensity and wild abandon.”
“(His parents) spoke of his empathy for those less fortunate, his humour, bravery and enormous capacity for love.”