Munby raises concerns for safety of suicidial girl due for youth custody release

In a written judgment, Sir James Munby said he is "ashamed and embarrassed" that no suitable hospital placement where child and adolescent mental health services are available has been found for a 17-year-old girl who is due to be released from youth custody in 11 days' time.

The girl, who is referred to only as X to protect her identity, is currently being held in a secure unit, referred to as ZX, and has made a number of suicide attempts.

Doctors have said they believe she needs to receive appropriate care on her release, but so far an approbate placement has not been found.

Munby said the situation highlights the "disgraceful and utterly shaming lack of proper provision in this country of the clinical, residential and other support services".

He added that the country will have "blood on its hands" if a suitable placement cannot be found.

"If there is no effective, realistic and above all safe plan in place for X when she is released from ZX, the consequences, given her suicidal ideation, do not bear thinking about," Munby's statement says.

"If the fears of ZX are well-founded - and this, for the time being, is the basis upon which we must proceed - we should be left with little but the hope that the police would have had occasion to take X into custody before she was able to cause herself irreparable harm.

"Is that really the best the care system and the family justice system can achieve?"

His judgment states that the existing care plan, put together by Cumbria County Council, to send her back to any community setting is a "suicide mission to a catastrophic level".

"Staff do not think it will take more than 24 to 48 hours before they receive a phone call stating that X has made a successful attempt on her life," the judgment states.

Munby's comments comes amid ongoing concerns about the state of child and adolescent mental health services.

Earlier this week the government announced plans to hire 2,000 additional CAMHS staff.

Kathy Evans, chief executive of Children England, said: "This might be the most powerful, shameful proof that public sector commissioning for children is in crisis.

"We know that austerity policies and cuts have contributed, but more fundamentally this is a catastrophic failure to commission new additional capacity to meet needs that have been rising steadily for years.

"The system for funding and commissioning all kinds of care for all vulnerable children needs wholesale, national redesign. Urgently."