A grieving mother whose daughter died by suicide after being sent home from hospital has criticised Andy Burnham's proposed mental health centres as a 'cheap plaster on a gaping wound'. Natalie James' daughter Ella Murray first sought help in December 2022 after attempting to take her own life and losing a friend to suicide.
Hospital discharge and tragedy
The mother-of-seven says that after her daughter's mental health began to 'snowball', Ella told her school on November 13, 2023, that she wanted to end her life and was taken to hospital. Natalie claims Ella was seen by the mental health team, who deemed her at 'medium risk' of self-harm, but she was sent home.
The 39-year-old says the next day a member of the mental health home treatment team visited Ella at home and said they would refer her to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) and social services. Natalie says 45 minutes after the nurse left, Ella took her own life and was officially declared dead on November 15, 2023.
Coroner's findings and Burnham's plan
Following her death, the coroner concluded there was a 'failure to undertake an adequate, or any, risk assessment and take any further steps to ensure Ella’s safety'. Andy Burnham's plan aims to catch mental health problems early, with up to 159 new mental health clinics opening across England by 2029. Many would be in high street locations such as banks and libraries, at a proposed cost of £343 million.
However, Natalie suggested the proposal was like putting a 'cheap fabric plaster over a gaping wound' and suggested they would be more 'waiting rooms'. Instead, the stay-at-home mum is campaigning for Ella's Law, which would make suicide risk assessments legally mandatory when a child expresses intent to harm themselves.
Campaign for Ella's Law
Natalie, who lives in Sittingbourne, Kent, said: "She [Ella] was 100% failed by the system. She was absolutely beautiful, but I'm her mum, but I feel like that was outshone by how beautiful she was on the inside, her kindness. She was very funny, very quick-witted."
"I just feel like we're sticking a cheap fabric plaster over a gaping wound and with all the will in the world it isn't going to make a difference. It's just another waiting room. What happens when someone presents with suicidal thoughts, are they going to receive an immediate assessment with meaningful intervention or is it simply signposting to another overstretched service."
"We are just moving people from one waiting room to another waiting room and they're calling it early intervention. Another place for someone to give up hope. What is going to be different, is there going to be a psychologist there that can sit there and properly assess you, no, because we don't have the funding for that."
Natalie said: "A walk-in hub cannot replace robust crisis assessment. We should not build more doors into the system if, once a child walks through one, there is still a chance they can fall through the cracks."
The mum explained that Ella's own battles with mental health worsened when one of the youngster's friends ended her life just after her 13th birthday in March 2023. Natalie said: "That hit Ella in a very hard way, really affected her, it then came out that she hadn't opened the last message from that girl so she had felt that she had let her down. Between December 2022 and April 2023, it started to snowball."
"On November 13 2023 she told the school that she wanted to end her life so we took her into the hospital where she was triaged and saw a crisis nurse. She was sent home and told that they would send the home treatment team round to her. On the 14th the home treatment team came, she spent half an hour with Ella. I walked upstairs and that was when I found her, 45 minutes after she saw that nurse left."
Since the tragedy, Natalie has been campaigning for change and set up Ella's Law, a government petition that calls for mandatory suicide risk assessment for adolescents in hospital who express intent to harm. She underwent a self-harm and suicide prevention course in March 2024.
Natalie said: "I'm just an ordinary mum, I'm not a campaigner, I'm not an activist, I'm just a mum. I'm never going to see the woman she was going to be, I'm never going to know what her dreams were, I'm not going to get to go and open that [GCSE] envelope with her."
"Ella's Law is about making sure that when a child is brave enough to say, 'I don’t want to be here anymore,' the system cannot simply listen, decide they are not at immediate enough risk, and send them away without a proper, comprehensive suicide risk assessment and appropriate support. Ella's Law would create a clear legal safeguard at that critical moment, turning 'we should assess them' into 'we must assess them'. There are families right now going through this."
Medway NHS Foundation Trust and The Department of Health and Social Care have been contacted for comment.
