DESPERATE GIRL BACK ON STREETS
A HOMELESS girl aged 12 with a serious infection walked out of the Gold Coast University Hospital and back on to the streets, despite being under the watch of Child Safety.
The Bulletin has obtained shocking photographs of the girl’s staph wound on her back which friends believe she can not attend to while living rough in a teen gang. They said the young girl was back with teenage gang members, could not look after her wounds and was in a dire emotional state. In a text to a friend, she wrote: “I just want to say to everyone I love U and I am sorry for being alive.”
It’s understood youth workers and Child Safety officers tried to help her with her daily medication.
A 12-YEAR-OLD homeless girl with a serious infection walked out of the Gold Coast University Hospital and back on to the streets, despite being under the watch of Child Safety.
The Bulletin has obtained shocking photographs of the girl’s staph wound on her back which her friends believe she could not attend to while living rough in a teen gang.
A friend said: “The infection was left untreated for a time because she was on the streets. She ended up with more lesions on her legs.
“A youth worker was assigned to her. She tried to abscond twice (with an older girl). She went back to have a cannula and drain removed then was released on the streets.” Friends believe the young girl was back with teenage gang members, could not look after her wounds and was in a dire emotional state.
In a text, the girl told a friend: “I just want to say to everyone I love U (sic) and I am sorry for being alive BC (sic) I am not worth anything anymore I just want to end it.”
The Bulletin understands youth workers and Child Safety officers have attempted to help the girl with her daily medication.
A new mobile telephone was bought so she could remain in contact with her friends and family members.
The hospital, Child Safety and police launched a search and investigation once she had left the hospital.
The Bulletin’s Trouble on the Streets investigation in the past month has revealed the young girl, once in a choir, had spent 10 loving years in a foster home west of the city before being taken from the family and put in residential care.
Mudgeeraba MP Ros Bates said the foster family was “willing and able” to take care of the child and she wanted to return home.
“Child Safety need to remember what their purpose is, which is to protect the child and act in the best interests of the child,” Ms Bates said.
The Bulletin did not receive responses from Gold Coast Health or Child Safety before deadline for this story.
But Child Safety Minister Di Farmer previously said the decision to remove a child from foster care was not taken lightly.
The young girl was only 11 when she began living on the streets in March this year.
She has lived in a tent at a southern beach until moved on by council workers, sheltered in Surfers Paradise, camped outside Southport shops and slept in toilets.
She wrote to her foster mother: “Love you mummy. I might come back to you maby (sic). Love you. Mummy child safety don’t lisan (sic) to me and help me come home aswall (sic). Child Safety lied to me please help me I don’t want too (sic) go.”
The child has not returned to a resi-care home in the Coast’s northern suburbs. The Bulletin last year revealed the most challenging youths were costing taxpayers up to $1.4 million each as profit-hungry agencies rorted the system.