- The Observer
40 25.08.19 Focus
Shannon Quinn
aged 21, during
her second year
at university
studying fi ne
arts. Photograph
courtesy of Anne
Quinn‘My daughter would be alive today
if only she’d received the right care’
Shannon Quinn died
after being neglected
at her mental health
unit. Her mother Anne
tells Yvonne Roberts too
many troubled young
women are being failed
A
basket of vibrant pur-
ple petunias hangs
at the door of Anne
Quinn’s home in
Solih ull. In July, Anne,
58, invited fam-
ily and friends to celebrate the 25th
birthday of her youngest daughter,
Shannon. She asked guests to bring
purple fl owers, Shannon’s favourite
colour. The only person absent from
the close-knit circle was Shannon
herself because in January she was
found dead in her bathroom at Oak
House mental health rehabilitation
unit , run by Camino Healthcare in
Tipton in the Black Country.
Earlier this month , at Shannon’s
inquest , coroner Zafar Siddique con-
cluded there had been gross fail-
ings of care by staff at Oak House
and that neglect had been a “direct
contributory factor” in her death.
Shannon was supposed to be
observed every fi ve minutes because
she had a history of using a liga-
ture to relieve stress. She was found
hanged in her room on 9 January.
A 6pm and possibly later obser-
vation had been missed, an omis-
sion not revealed until the inquest.
An ambulance was called at 6.17pm.
Shannon’s room was littered with
items that could be used to ligature.
“To hear the coroner essentially
say that with the right care Shannon
would be alive today, that was hard,”
Anne says. “She had plans. She
wanted to go back to university and
become an art therapist. She was
sweet, kind, gentle and very cre-
ative but you couldn’t quite reach
her. She called herself emotion pho-
bic. She wrote in her diary, ‘They say
I should talk about my feelings but
I don’t know how. ’ She told me that
she would wake up every morn-
ing feeling someone precious had
died. I can’t imagine what that must
be like.”
At Shannon’s inquest , the coro-
ner indicated that he would be writ-
ing to the Department of Health and
Social Care and the Care Quality
Commission, the regulator for
health and social care in England,
raising concerns about Oak House,
including the failure to properly
train staff in her complex psychi-
atric condition. Lisa Clayton, hired
by Camino to investigate Shannon’s
death, said staff did not have the
skills to care for Shannon and had
been given just 90 minutes’ training,
“a basic overview”.
The coroner also questioned
Shannon’s placement, a two-hour
£70 round trip taxi ride from her
home. Anne and Shannon’s father
had split up when she was two.
Anne has limited mobility and
arthritis of the spine and other
joints. She took early retirement
from her job as a librarian 10 years
ago to care for her daughter.
Tragically, Shannon Quinn is part
of an alarming pattern in which
young vulnerable women have
died because of multiple failures in
mental health settings. Last week,
Duncan Lawrence, “lead clinician”
at Lancaster Lodge care home (now
closed) in Richmond, south-west
London , pleaded guilty to failing
to provide the coroner with infor-
mation about the care of Sophie
Bennett , 19, who killed herself in- An inquest earlier this year
found Sophie, diagnosed with atypi-
cal autism, bipolar affective disorder
and social anxiety disorder, had died
after neglect at the home, which
had descended into “chaos” after
cost-cutting.
In Shannon’s case, she was diag-
nosed as dyslexic at the age of six.
“From the age of two, her ambi-
tion had been to go to university,”
Anne says. “Her dyslexia meant
she was always put in the bot-
tom stream, and that was a trig-
ger. She constantly worried that she
wouldn’t get the grades.” At 14, she
took an overdose. She was subse-
quently diagnosed as high-func-
tioning autistic. Shannon developed
anorexia and began to self-harm,
refusing to attend school. Eventually
she attended a school for those who
cannot function well in mainstream
education. “On her second day, her
teacher asked to see her outside
class. Shannon thought she was in
trouble. He told her he wanted to put
her in the gifted and talented group.
It made a world of difference.”
Shannon achieved six good
GCSE s and received a distinction in
her B Tec. Shannon and Anne also
took an Open University course in
the history of art, and they co-wrote
a children’s book about cats, each
with a disability.range of behaviours, including diffi -
culty in regulating emotions, fear of
rejection and a pattern of self-harm.
During the fi ve months Shannon
was at Oak House, her drinking and
self-harming escalated but she was
never formally assessed by a doc-
tor under the Mental Health Act. In
August 2018, Shannon swallowed
window cleaner and applied a liga-Interview
ture. In September she swallowed a
razor, a nail and applied a ligature
twice. In November, she swallowed
three razors and tied a ligature. Only
one member of staff carried a liga-
ture cutter and there were no liga-
ture-free rooms.
“We were told she needed an
opportunity to be with peers and
make friends, so why [was she at]‘Private homes where
the main motivation
is profi t shouldn’t
be looking after
vulnerable people’
Anne QuinnIn her second year at univer-
sity, studying fi ne arts, Shannon
found the experience increasingly
stressful and began to drink. “If I
won the lottery I’d establish a uni-
versity for autistic students,” Anne
says. Shannon was sectioned sev-
eral times. She had been diagnosed
with emotionally unstable person-
ality disorder, manifesting itself in a