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Emma Steenson - Source: ONE News -
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A teenager with the mental age of 11 is locked up in police cells because she has nowhere else to go.
Police and the girl's mother say she is a danger to the public and needs professional help but she has been forced to bunk down in a local police cell after being discharged from Nelson's mental health unit last week.
Emma Steenson is an attractive 18-year-old with a mental illness. Her mother Vicki says Emma is intellectually impaired, has autism, epilepsy and possible schizophrenia.
"She's 18 but she's 11...you put an 11-year-old in a police cell with nothing," Vicki Sweenen says.
In December a judge admitted her to Nelson's mental health unit but she was discharged last Monday when they said she isn't covered by the Mental Health Act.
Because the unit says she is not mentally ill, Emma's parents have been left in limbo.
Vicki was violently assaulted by Emma on Friday and the family were left with no option but to call the police.
"I was quite scared actually...I know that sounds stupid from a mother's point of view but this wasn't my daughter," says Vicki.
So Emma has spent the last two nights in a police cell.
"In her certain circumstance probably the cells aren't the best place to put her, but at the moment there is just nowhere else to put her," Inspector Brian McGurk from Nelson police says.
Caregivers say it just isn't good enough.
"They are not nurses, they are not trained in mental health, and they are certainly not trained in intellectual disability. It's not right to have an 18-year-old put in a cell because we don't have a bed that's goin g to keepm her saFEo help them," says Felicity Jordan from Autism New Zealand.
But Nelson and Marlborough District Health Board says Emma just has behavioural problems and this is a case of someone falling between the gaps between intellectual disability services and mental health.
But Vicki Steenson says it's not about which category her daughter falls into.
"At least she's safe but the Mental Health...I can't see how they could discharge her, I just can't see that," says Vicki.
