A ‘beautiful' and 'kind' teen with ‘so much to live for’ was found dead under the rear carriage of a train near Blackpool hours after going missing at college during a meeting about her mental health.
But since Mr Beesley, who had 180 students on his watch, was not available at that time, it was agreed he would see her at 2 o’clock, when they had a group session. However, at the end of that session, Mr Beesley managed to speak briefly with her but had another class afterwards, and tried to find another member of staff to speak to her. He told the hearing: “She obviously wanted to say something, so I said, just come to the next session, so she came to that.
Holly then told Mr Beesley that she felt sick, at around 4.35pm, so she left the room to go to the toilet, after being asked to leave her bag behind as her teacher thought it would mean she would return. Yet when a female member of staff went to look for her, Holly was not in the toilets, so the alarm was raised and the search began at a quarter to five.
The Coroner asked Mr Heyes-Brown if there was any college policy dealing with students who leave college, to which the teacher replied it would be dealt with as a safeguarding issue. Mr Cousins persisted: “Where in this policy would I find the college procedure for dealing with this? However, the court heard how Holly had been known to mental health services since the age of 15 and had been diagnosed with depressive disorder, receiving a range of treatments from CAMHS, including an inpatient admission to a children’s centre based in Heysham in May 2020. She engaged well with the treatment whilst an inpatient, and continued to receive community level care afterwards, but staff at CAMHS said she struggled to open up and talk about her feelings.
Although he told the hearing that the threshold was not crossed for any prevention of future deaths report to be recorded, and that the inquest was not seeking to apportion blame, he promised to write to Blackpool Sixth Form College asking them if their policy on missing students could be reviewed. However, he added: “I remind myself that this letter is not a criticism.