The parents of a teenage girl from Salisbury, who died after she was left alone in a children’s mental health ward by an inexperienced agency worker using fake ID, have described their daughter as a “loving and adventurous girl with a whole life of joy ahead of her”.

Ruth Szymankiewicz was being treated for an eating disorder at Huntercombe Hospital in Berkshire and had been placed under strict one-to-one observation when, on February 12 2022, she was left on her own by the member of staff responsible for watching her.

The 14-year-old was able to shut herself in her bedroom at the hospital’s psychiatric intensive care unit – also known as Thames ward – where she self-harmed, then died two days later at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

On Thursday, an inquest jury sitting at Buckingham

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