12 hours agoShareSaveJames Melley and Alison HoltBBC News, Social AffairsShareSaveFamily handoutWarning: This article contains upsetting details and reference to suicideThere didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary when Jane Figueiredo spoke to her daughter that night on the phone.”Alice asked me to bring her some snacks for the next time we visited,” Jane says. But that call, at 22:15 on 6 July 2015, was the last conversation they ever had.Around three hours later, Jane and her husband, Max, were being driven to hospital in a police car at speed. They had been told their daughter was gravely ill.Alice had got into a communal toilet at Goodmayes Hospital, in Ilford, east London, where she was a mental health patient, and taken her own life. She was just months away from her 23rd birthday.On Monday, almost 10 years later, the North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT), which runs the hospital, and Benjamin Aninakwa, the manager of the ward Alice was on, were found guilty of health and safety failings over her death.The jury decided not enough was done by NELFT, or Aninakwa, to prevent Alice from killing herself.’You are not above the law’It’s taken a decade of battling by Alice’s parents to uncover the truth about how the 22-year-old was able to take her own life in a unit where she was meant to be safe.They twice had to sell their home, quit their jobs and have worked full-time on the case.The jury deliberated for 24 days to reach all the verdicts, after which time the Trust was cleared of the more serious charge of corporate manslaughter, while Aninakwa, 53, of Grays, Essex, was cleared of gross negligence manslaughter.During the seven-month trial, we sat a few seats away from the family. They’ve sometimes been overwhelmed, leaving the court angry or in tears, as they felt their voices – and that of Alice – were not being heard.Now, Jane hopes the verdicts will bring major change to psychiatric care providers around the country. “You need to do far, far better to stop failing those people who you have a duty of care to,” she said after the verdict.Weeks earlier, in mid-March this year, the Figueiredos were living in a hotel room in central London.While folding their clothes, they spoke to the BBC during a break in the trial, which was already running months longer than expected.They had been living out of suitcases since the end of October, when court hearings began.Even before the pain of hearing evidence about their daughter’s death, they said simply existing like this had been a huge challenge. For the couple, it was important to be at the Old Bailey every day in person – no matter the cost – because they felt this was their only chance to see the Trust held to account for their daughter’s death.Sensitive and caringAlice was born in 1992, the second of three daughters. She was a bright and energetic child, and often the centre of attention. She loved music, poetry, reading and, in particular, art. Family and friends say she had a big personality.”She had a really deeply thoughtful, sensitive, caring nature. She was really kind. She was really generous,” remembers Jane.As a child, Alice started to develop what became an eating disorder, and by 15 she was showing symptoms of severe depression and was admitted to a mental health unit.In the following years she would be hospitalised on many more occasions.In 2012, then 19, she was admitted to the Hepworth Ward, at Goodmayes Hospital, for the first time. It is an inpatient mental health unit for women, run by NELFT. She was admitted there a total of seven times over the following three years.”She needed safety. She was a risk to herself,” says Jane.”It was a question of, somehow managing the crisis and trusting the medical profession to make the right decisions,” adds Max, Alice’s stepfather.Between admissions, Alice had lon …
