Foster mother death ‘avoidable’
Couple were too inexperienced to cope with troubled teenager
THE death of a woman killed by a 13-year-old child she had fostered might have been avoided if the agency organising the placement had taken into account the victim’s status as a new carer, an inquiry has concluded.
Dawn McKenzie, 34, was stabbed by the teenager she and her husband Bryan were looking after at their home in Hamilton in June 2011. It was their first experience as foster carers.
The boy, who is referred to only as child D for legal reasons, was detained for seven years in 2012 after admitting culpable homicide on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
A fatal accident inquiry into Mrs McKenzie’s death was held earlier this year before Sheriff David Bicket in Motherwell. He concluded her death might have been avoided had Foster Care Associates Scotland (FCAS), an independent fostering agency which arranged placements at the request of Glasgow City Council, “taken proper account” of the couple’s lack of experience as foster carers.
Estella Abraham, chief executive of Foster Care Associates Scotland, said: “We will now reflect on the full findings and the recommendations made in the judgment to ensure foster care provided in Scotland continues to be the best it can be for children and families.”
THE death of a woman killed by her 13-year-old foster child might have been avoided, an inquiry has concluded.
Dawn McKenzie, 34, was stabbed by the teenager she and her husband Bryan were looking after at their home in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, in June 2011.
The boy, who is referred to only as child D for legal reasons, was detained for seven years in 2012 after admitting culpable homicide on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
Previously regarded as a nice boy who was settling extremely well despite a very troubled background, he became violent without warning after contact with his family led to him being grounded and having his Xbox console and mobile phone confiscated.
He had stabbed Dawn 10 times, including two blows to the head, one of which left part of the knife blade stuck in her skull.
Sheriff David Bicket ruled the company which placed the boy should have recognised that Mrs McKenzie and her husband were too inexperienced to take the youngster.
In findings from the Fatal Accident Inquiry into the death, Sheriff Bicket said of the agency, Foster Care Associates Scotland (FCAS): “They were the body who had knowledge of the potential foster carers.”
They knew the McKenzies’ background, that they were a childless couple with experience of looking after their nephew, temporarily, who was slightly older than Child D and without his troubled background. They knew that Mrs McKenzie’s experience – she had been a nursery nurse – was with children up to the age of five, and that it was the couple’s first foster placement.
He concluded: “The death of Mrs McKenzie might have been avoided if Foster Care Associates Scotland – when considering if they had a suitable placement for child D – had taken proper account of Mr and Mrs McKenzie’s status as new carers, and lack of suitable prior experience of adolescent aged children such as child D and accordingly had not recommended them as suitable prospective carers for him.”
Sheriff Bicket refrained from criticising the practices and policies of the agency Foster Care Associates Scotland (FCAS), which recruited the McKenzies and those of Glasgow City Council, which placed the boy with them.
However he backed the findings of child protection expert Kirstie McLean who told the FAI, held in Motherwell, that the placement should not have been made.
While they were seen as potentially excellent new foster carers the McKenzies agreed to take Child D partly because they feared “slipping down the list” if they rejected the placement.
The FAI heard that Mrs McKenzie and her husband Bryan had just become foster carers when the 13-year-old from Glasgow was placed with them in January 2011. The placement was rushed and badly handled due to the collapse of a previous placement and staff shortages and bad weather meant they received less support from social workers than they should have done.
They were also given limited information about Child D, who had had a traumatic childhood and was a bed wetter who still had difficulty using cutlery.
Although he had apparently settled well, the teenager stabbed his foster parent with a kitchen knife after a series of events which included unplanned contact with his real mother on social media,
‘‘ Looking at matters from the perspective of the best interest of the child, not carers, GCC acted appropriately
and news that his father was not the same man he had previously been told, as well as the confiscation of computer equipment.
Describing Mrs McKenzie’s death as “tragic”, Sheriff Bicket said all foster carers should receive training in crisis prevention and intervention when they first started to look after children.
He recommended that new carers receive much better, accessible, written information about a child’s background.
He concluded that there was no reason why Glasgow City council should not have accepted, when FCAS offered the placement with the McKenzies. “Looking at matters from the perspective of the best interest of the child, not the carers, GCC acted appropriately in accepting the offer made,” he said.
“We will now reflect on the full findings and the recommendations made in the judgment.”
A spokesman for Glasgow City Council added “This has been an incredibly distressing case and our thoughts remain with Mrs McKenzie’s family.
“While Sheriff Bicket is clear nothing could have predicted this tragedy, we believe it is appropriate to take time to give his findings the consideration they deserve, before commenting in detail.”
ON the final day of a fatal accident inquiry at Hamilton last month, Sheriff David Bicket remarked that “nobody had a bad word to say about Dawn McKenzie”. We can well believe it of a young woman performing an inestimable public service as a foster parent.
The fact makes her death at the hands of the child in her care all the more difficult to contemplate.
Disquiet deepens when you confront the fact that the child, “Child D”, was just 13 when he stabbed Mrs McKenzie to death in her home in Hamilton.
When you further realise that this boy had sprung from truly hellish circumstances, that only diminished responsibility begins to explain his deed, and that the killing was nevertheless avoidable, disquiet gives way to profound, disbelieving shock.
The first instinct is to apportion blame. The reaction is understandable, but it is far from adequate. Child D will pay, in some measure, for his actions.
But what of those who brought him into the world, who failed him utterly by inflicting a miserable, chaotic life on a boy and his siblings? What of social services? What, in particular, of the fostering agency involved?
So the questions follow, one upon the other.
The reflexive urge to blame social workers when things go horribly wrong in difficult cases is familiar but, not, in this instance, justifiable.
As Sheriff Bicket’s scrupulous determination makes abundantly clear, Child D’s brief life amounted to one horror story after another.
To call it a “troubled upbringing” does no justice to the truth. Agencies, led by social workers, struggled time and again to rescue the boy. It is hard to see how anyone could have done more. The sheriff concludes, nevertheless, that, while Mrs McKenzie’s death was not foreseeable, it might have been avoided if the fostering agency, Foster Care Associates Scotland, had taken proper account of her lack of experience.
In this, the sheriff has made a particular determination.
The “system of working” that led to D being placed in foster care was not defective, but a decision made within the system could be faulted.
Mrs McKenzie had experience as a care worker, but she and her husband were new to foster care.
They had hoped to be given charge of a younger child and lacked “suitable prior experience of adolescent aged children such as child D”.
The fostering system – of “blanket age range approval” – was not the essential issue.
Rather it was, a lay person might think, a matter of common sense: asking a childless couple with no previous experience to foster a tortured child was a mistake that could have been avoided, with consequences we all should mourn.
Which of us could make such decisions? Which of us could guarantee to be right each and every time?
And which of us has the certain solution to a world in which a child is sexually abused, then gives birth to a series of children by several men while she is almost a child herself, and in the process inflicts existence on a Child D?
Mrs McKenzie and her husband volunteered to help repair a little of that terrible damage. They paid an unspeakable price.
But even as we mourn Dawn McKenzie, we should be eternally grateful that the world yet contains such individuals.