THE mother of a boy who killed his foster carer contacted him via Facebook just days before he stabbed the woman to death, a fatal accident inquiry has heard.

 

The boy's allocated social worker Stephen Lorimer said he still did not know what had been discussed during the conversation through the social media site, which was unauthorised as all contact with the boy's family was meant to be supervised.

However family members had previously scapegoated the teenager for the family's problems, he said.

The boy, then 13, had been in the placement for six and a half months when he attacked his foster mother Dawn McKenzie with a knife.

Mr Lorimer, who is employed by Glasgow City Council, told the inquiry in Motherwell that the move for the boy to stay with foster carers Dawn and Bryan McKenzie had been last-minute and not good practice, as social workers been unable to meet with the Hamilton couple, or undertake matching procedures to ensure they were a good fit with the troubled boy.

However the placement had been working well and was a lower priority than other cases on his books.

Mr Lorimer said that the incident with Facebook was the first occasion on which he had had any indication that Mrs McKenzie was struggling to look after the Glasgow boy, who had been in care since 2008.

He said the boy's mother and father had previously attempted to disrupt foster placements and on one occasion his mother had turned up at the school his sister attended and attempted to persuade her to leave with her by jumping the school gates.

Of the incident when the boy revealed his mother had been in touch via Facebook, he said: "To this day I don't know what she said to him."

Mrs McKenzie confiscated the boy's laptop as a temporary measure to prevent further contact. "That was the first real indication I got from Mrs McKenzie that she in any shape or form struggled with the care of [the boy]" he said. Although removing the computer was designed to protect not punish him, Mr Lorimer said the boy "would possibly see it as a punishment".

The incident happened on June 15, 2011, nine days before the fatal attack on Mrs McKenzie, for which the boy was detained for seven years at the High Court in Glasgow in 2012.

The FAI in Motherwell heard from Mr Lorimer that the placement with the McKenzies had not been arranged until days before a previous foster placement ended.

As the allocated worker, Mr Lorimer would have expected to have contributed to the choice of new carers. He would also have expected to have had meetings with the McKenzies and meet with Foster Care Associates, who provided the placement, he said. None of this had happened by the time the boy was placed with the couple, on November 28, 2010.

Under council policy Mr Lorimer should then have visited the McKenzies within seven days. In fact he did not even meet Dawn McKenzie until seven weeks later at a children's hearing and no formal visit took place until January 28, a further fortnight later.

He said he should have had more contact with the family, and he was "not making excuses", but other commitments had got in the way, including other child protection cases. He said bad weather had also prevented one visit, then he had been abroad on leave over Christmas, before another visit was called off because the boy was ill.

The inquiry continues.