Social workers urged to support potential carers after foster parent murder case

McKenzie was stabbed at her home in Hamilton by the boy she was fostering, who cannot be named for legal reasons. He was 13 when he killed McKenzie, who was a foster carer and nursery worker.

The judge ordered that he be detained for seven years and monitored for a further five after being found guilty of culpable homicide on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

The Scottish Association of Social Work described the case as “highly unusual” and urged potential carers not be deterred from fostering as a result.

Ruth Stark, manager of the association, said the killing was an “extremely tragic case”, but emphasised the fact that McKenzie’s death could not have been prevented.

“Several psychiatrists have said that the boy’s violent act could not have been predicted,” she said. “Reports have suggested that he was due to go on holiday with McKenzie, which shows that his attack was unpredictable.”

“Sadly, it is more often the case that foster carers abuse children rather than the other way round. But either way, the numbers of incidents of abuse between foster carers and the children they foster, are very small.

"There are many, many more cases of successful fostering arrangements that have had a transformational effect on the lives of disadvantaged young people."

Stark added that whilst professionals need to be on-hand to provide advice potential foster carers, they also need support to deal with serious incidents such as the McKenzie case.

“Whenever you have a death on your caseload, it takes a lot of guts to get up and go to work each day and deal with what you have to deal with,” she said.

The Scottish Association of Social Work is currently running a series of continuing professional development seminars on the issue of dealing with traumatic death.

“We’ve had a huge take-up from practitioners in Scotland who’ve said that this issue is something that we really need to be fit and healthy to deal with, because it happens in all sorts of different ways,” she explained.

“Social workers deal with everything from suicide to murder and violent assaults. Sadly professionals social workers are also killed by their clients every year, so we have to support people through it.”