We Locked Children In, Youth Worker Tells Inquest

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday September 14, 2000

Mike Seccombe, in Darwin

The man who locked an Aboriginal boy in his room at the Darwin detention centre minutes before the boy's suicide on February 9 this year was called a youth worker, but the job description came with no training to justify it.

Yesterday he told the inquest into the death of the boy, 15, he believed it was ``standard practice" to lock the door on children who had been sent to their rooms for ``time out" for minor indiscretions. In previous evidence, the senior youth worker on duty that night had said it was not.

But how was the man to know what standard practice was? He told the court he had received no formal training for the job.

He had no educational qualifications for it.

In the four months he had worked at the centre, he went to no courses, no seminars, no workshops, no educational units, and had sat no tests.

Although the majority of children who passed through the centre were Aboriginal, staff received no cross-cultural training, such as staff at Darwin's adult jail received.

The man said he had received no instruction in mental health issues, had not learned how to recognise ``at risk" inmates.

He had attended a lecture once on the physical and mental effects of petrol sniffing (the boy was a sniffer), but that was years before, in a previous job, and he could not remember much of it.

Although the youth worker had first-aid training, he did not know how to administer oxygen to the unconscious boy.

Fortunately, other youth workers on duty that night did.

There was, the man said, a copy of a procedural manual at the Don Dale correctional centre, located in the central office.

Staff were asked to read it, but to do so while also attending to their other duties supervising the inmates.

No-one in a senior position had ever taken him through the manual, discussed it with him or tested him on his knowledge of it.

The man, who, like the dead boy and other youth workers and teachers at the centre, cannot be named, did have experience working in drug and alcohol counselling services, often with Aborigines.

But it was only since the boy's death which has sparked national and international criticism of the Northern Territory's mandatory sentencing practices that he and other staff at the centre had been given their own copies of the manual.

The man said he knew he had to read case notes compiled on the inmates, but had been unaware of various indications of the boy's disturbing behaviour in the few weeks before his death, including hearing voices, threatening suicide, hiding under his bed, telling other staff he believed he was mad. They were not logged.

He told the court it would have influenced his decision about locking the boy in had he known these things. But, he said, the decision to place the boy in his room was made by the senior youth worker on that shift.

That senior youth worker also has told the inquest she was unaware of the various signs of disturbance in the boy, and probably would not have left him unattended in his room had she known.

The court also heard yesterday from the principal and deputy principal of the school attended by Don Dale inmates, both impressively credentialled for their jobs, who said the boy's behaviour had changed markedly between his first stint under mandatory sentencing, in October last year, and his second, in January/February this year.

They said he had gone from being a generally happy, positive boy to being a dark and volatile one, but they could not establish the cause for the change.

The hearing continues.