A TEENAGE Swindon girl had become a “lost soul” as her heroin addiction spiralled out on control, an inquest heard.

Kate Walsh, 16, a former Highworth Warneford School pupil and talented flautist became addicted to the class-A drug and had overdosed twice before she was found in a boarded up squat in Manchester Road on January 3, 2004.

A former project worker of Gloucester House Addictions Rehabilitation Centre in Highworth, known only as Jane, due to confidentiality issues, said Kate was losing hope. Giving evidence at Trowbridge Town Hall yesterday, she said she last saw Kate at the centre on December 23.

“I had a terrible sinking feeling that Kate was losing hope and did not want to live anymore,” she said.

“She lacked hope, she was completely beyond human reach. She was someone who didn’t want to be helped.

“I told her to go home.”

Jane said she did not inform Social Services or Swindon Police as she believed nothing short of locking her up under section would have helped.

Kate Walsh’s parents Debbie, who gave up her job as a postmistress to care for her daughter, and her father Anthony, a sound engineer, said Kate slipped through a “grey area”, because she was too young for adult care services which begins at 18, and at 16 she was old enough to leave home. They wanted her placed in secure accommodation after she formed an obsessive relationship with a 27-year-old heroin addict Alex Charlamow, it was claimed.

Druglink worker David Benfield recommended Kate be put on the Child Protection Register for “heightened concerns and regular strategy meetings”, but this failed to happen. He will be cross-examined about this tomorrow.

Kate was later discharged from the Gloucestershire Royal Hospital and returned home after refusing to go into rehabilitation centre, said Wiltshire Coroner David Masters.

Ruth Turnbull, a nurse who completed a mental health assessment of Kate after her second overdose, told the inquest that it was decided the teenager could not be placed in secure accommodation because she was not “a danger to the public”.

“She wanted to go back to her parents’ home,” she said. “But her mother was concerned that if she did go home again she would disappear again.

“Given her age, Kate was expressing a wish that she wanted to go home and I saw no reason not to go along with her wishes but I wished that she’d agreed to go to a rehab placement.”

Miss Turnbull said that, as far as she was aware, there were no powers to “force” someone of Kate’s age to go into rehab or supported lodgings.

She regarded it as a social care issue and not a mental health problem.

Coroner Mr Masters said Kate and Mr Charlamow formed a relationship during his residence at the Gloucester House, run by the Salvation Army.

The inquest has heard that, over the course of a few months, Kate descended into addiction, eventually injecting heroin and smoking crack cocaine.

Kate, who was officially recorded as homeless, overdosed for the second time on November 23 after taking half a gram of heroin and half a gram of cocaine.

The inquest continues.