• 🇳🇿 🇲🇲 🇯🇵 🇨🇳 🇦🇺 🇦🇶 🇮🇳
    Australian & Asian
    Drug Discussion


    Welcome Guest!
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
  • AADD Moderators: swilow | Vagabond696

NEWS: Adelaide Advertiser - 16/5/07 'Drug dealing `rife' at hostel'

lil angel15

Bluelight Crew
Joined
Jul 16, 2005
Messages
7,828
'Drug dealing `rife' at hostel
May 16, 2007 02:15am

DRUG dealing was rife at a State Government mental health hostel where a dead teenager was not discovered for three days, an inquest has heard.

State Coroner Mark Johns is investigating how Thomas Keough died from a methadone overdose at Palm Lodge, College Park, when he was not prescribed with the drug.

Mr Keough, 18, is believed to have died on Friday, August 9, 2003. However, a Palm Lodge staff member did not find his body in his room until the evening of Monday, August 11, 2003.

Mr Johns yesterday heard the hostel, operated by the Central Northern Adelaide Health Service, was under-staffed when Mr Keough died, with only one nurse on duty during the day and another at night. He also was told staff did not enter the rooms of its 20-odd residents, keep written records of their movements or perform searches for illicit drugs or alcohol when they returned from day trips or weekends.

This was despite drug dealers being frequently among those granted permission to stay at Palm Lodge, with staff regularly observing suspicious behaviour inside or outside the property.

A former resident provided a sworn statement to police saying he often saw residents who had consumed illicit drugs "walking around in a zombie-like state".

"It's a place where people take a lot of drugs," he said.

A former Palm Lodge nurse, Naomi Jolley, said a known drug dealer and "huge user" was a resident when Mr Keough died but had not been evicted because he was not caught dealing drugs.

Under questioning from lawyer and independent MP Nick Xenophon, acting for Mr Keough's father Mark, Ms Jolley said the drug dealing prompted the installation of a security gate.

The gate, however, was not electronically monitored because management made a decision "not to spend the extra $900" to enable the tracing of swipe cards used to enter the property, she said. Instead, staff relied on visual sightings to determine who was at Palm Lodge at any one time, with no checks of their rooms conducted during the day.

"It was up to them to tell us when they were leaving, either for the day or the weekend," said Ms Jolley. "If they were not seen, they were presumed to be on leave. If they were seen, they were ticked as being there."

Another nurse, David Barrington, said he personally always checked on residents each night to see if they were in their rooms but this was not official policy.

The inquest continues.

Adelaide Advertiser
 
Drug dealing is rife at at any mental health facility, its a shame that the fella was dead in his room for the whole weekend. the protocol for most places like this is that there is spose to be a head count every hour so i find it hard to believe that this has happened. The article said that they were understaffed but there is no excuse for what has happened, I hate to say it but it was nothing short off bad nursing.

Hopefully with this going through the Coroner will come up with some good outcomes which will be good for the mental health system. Hopefully it get broken into two parts, drug dealing in a facility and nursing staffing issues.
 
Yeah... my dead schizophrenic friend still, hasn't got a coroners report 6 months later. Great system. Oh and they let him out of the clinic after a few weeks of being in Long Bay Mental Jail for 6+ months.... (after being violent many times) without any family, friends or police knowledge. Great Mental Health system NSW. Fucking bullshit.

Pump em up with drugs and give them a crackly radio speaker, and a blinking blue light in the corner of their room to receive messages on.. Awesome facilities.
 
I can see where you are coming from splatt, I don't know your friends situation and i am in two minds. What i do know about working in mental health it is very frustrating trying to help people who arn't willing to help themselves in the slightest whereas people who are in real need of help seem to miss out for some reason or another (usually due to lack off beds and de-instutionallisation).

To be honest i really don't rate mental health nurses very highly, I find their nursing interventions very condisending and very out of date and sometimes they can be as threatening as a security guard outside a nightclub who's just thrown you out, Sometimes they play mind games etc.

Unfortunatly the prison system is turning in to the new mental health facility more and more people are just being thrown into jail as there is hardly any reasources to care for them in the community. The worse thing is that people are getting younger and younger and once in the system its pretty much a revoling door.

The facility in question is not a bad place. It's a respite home where people in the community who arn't coping and what has happened is that proper procedures weren't followed and unfortunalty this is the outcome. Very sad situation. And hopefully some good outcomes can come from this, but a 900$ key card entry is not the answer, if drugs can get into maximum security prisons, they will get into these sort of care centre's.
 
Change drug system 'or more will die'
COLIN JAMES
May 17, 2007 02:15am

THE State Government must overhaul its methadone program to stop further deaths from accidental overdoses, an inquest has heard.

State Coroner Mark Johns yesterday was told the Health Department was warned seven years ago about deaths from methadone but had taken no action.

State Forensic Science Centre senior pathologist Professor Roger Byard said he was part of a team which studied 35 methadone overdose deaths, eight of which were accidental.

Professor Byard said the study recommended the Health Department stop providing takeaway packs of methadone and instead require addicts to consume their doses at pharmacies or treatment clinics.

Departmental guidelines show pharmacists could still dispense up to 18 "takeaway" doses when addicts completed two months on the program.

"Whatever the intention, it is going to people who are not prescribed it," Professor Byard said.

Mr Johns is investigating how an 18- year-old resident of a State Government mental health hostel, Palm Lodge, died from a methadone overdose when he was not prescribed the drug.

Professor Byard, who conducted the autopsy on Thomas Keough, said he would have lapsed into a coma before suffering fatal brain damage. He confirmed Mr Keough died at least 48 hours before his body was found.

Adelaide Now
 
Nurse unaware of fatal drug overdose, court told

A mental health nurse who works at a College Park hostel in Adelaide where a young man died of a drug overdose in 2003 says she only learned what happened two years later when she was watching ABC television.

State Coroner Mark Johns is investigating the death of 18-year-old Thom Keough.

He died from an accidental methadone overdose at the mental health facility Palm Lodge but his body was not found in his room for three days.

Nurse Susan Allen has told the inquest she did not know how Thom Keough died until she watched a story about his death on ABC TV's Stateline in 2005.

She said she had had high hopes for the teenager's future and was devastated to discover he had died.

Ms Allen said staff were never given any details about Thom Keough's death.

The inquest is continuing.

ABC Online
 
Would it be safe to say that he was on anti depressants and thats why he died from Methadone? Or maybe a suicide attempt.
 
Changes urged after teenage drug death

Coronial findings have been made to improve practices at a College Park mental health hostel in Adelaide after a teenager's death in 2003.

Thomas Keough, 18, was found dead in his room at Palm Lodge about two days after taking methadone which had not been prescribed to him.

South Australia's coroner Mark Johns has recommended that Palm Lodge reviews its policies and that staff do daily room checks.

He wants any drug dealing allegations to be referred to police.

The coroner also wants to improve the police protocols for the investigation of drug-related deaths, to ascertain the source of drugs causing death.

Mr Johns has also recommended closer monitoring of methadone distribution.

Thomas Keough's father is satisfied with the recommendations but wants to see a focus on accommodation for young people.

"Not just a lodge with a nurse in the office but the kind of place that mirrors a family unit along with appropriate professional care and support," he said.

"I believe had Thom been living in that type of environment he might still be alive today."

abc.net.au
 
Top