'It has been devastating to listen to how, when she needed specialist healthcare for the first time... she was so badly let down'

THE mother of a 12-year-old girl who took her own life after she was sectioned has said she will never forgive the mental health unit where she was staying, or the hospital which failed to spot she had an underlying brain disorder.

- By DAVE HIGGENS, PA

Chloe Hayes criticised a “failure to provide appropriate care to her in her time of need” after an inquest jury found inadequate testing at the Queen's Medical Centre (QMC), in Nottingham, “possibly contributed” to the death of her “beautiful little girl’, Mia Lucas.

Mia was found unresponsive in her room at the Becton Centre, which is part of Sheffield Children’s Hospital, on January 29, 2024.

Jurors at the inquest heard how Mia was suffering from undiagnosed autoimmune encephalitis, a swelling of the brain which would have been the cause of the acute psychosis she was exhibiting.

This diagnosis only emerged partway through the nine-day-long inquest, after a pathologist revealed she had just received new postmortem examination test results, provoking shock in the courtroom and tears among Mia's relatives gathered in the public gallery.

Yesterday, the jury found that the failure to undertake a lumbar puncture at QMC before her transfer to the Becton Centre “possibly contributed to Mia’s death”.

The jury also said there was a failure at the Becton Centre to respond adequately to Mia's risk of self-harm.