Who are we

Hello, our names are Maxine Carrick and Gary Potts and we are the parents of Oskar Carrick who died in his Halls of Residence Bramall Court in Sheffield on the 19^th of June 2021. He took his own life just three weeks after his 21^st birthday. 

A bit about Oskar

Oskar was the middle of five children, he was a very sensitive, quirky, outgoing, and inquisitive young man. He was a committed friend who loved meeting new people and always saw the best in people. He was always up for an adventure and was good at talking his friends into traveling the length and breadth of the country to places he had yet to visit. Oskar loved road cycling and enjoyed traveling to Europe to watch the Tour de France, chasing professional cyclists up mountain passes dressed in a Suisse flag. He has left a huge hole in our lives that can never be filled. For us, this devastating occurrence changed our family forever. For us as a family to be even able to try to live with what has happened, we need to have some answers to a variety of questions as a matter of urgency.  

Inquest

We are appealing for urgent help and support to pay for legal representation to enable our legal team to raise the questions at the inquest that are not being answered by the health trust and the university, to ensure we find out what the university knew and what they did help Oskar.  We had a pre inquest review on the 6^th of September and a date has been set for the inquest on the 21^st of November. We did apply for exceptional funding through legal aid, however it was rejected.

We feel questions are not being asked and most certainly have not been answered to us as a family. Oskar left home a happy excited young person who was looking forward to making a career for himself in film. He was not depressed; he had suffered a traumatic brain injury 18 months earlier from being a passenger in a Road Traffic Collision. This disability was declared to the university along with the issues it presented for him such as memory issues. We filled in a form with him when making the declaration, giving mum as the named person to be contacted should anything untoward happen, or if they had any concerns about him, we naively thought he would be safe and that someone would be looking out for him. 

Oskar’s deterioration over an eight-week period as outlined in the small amount of information we have received from institutions (Hospital and University) via the coroner is shocking to us, and in our opinion leads to more questions than providing us with answers. Oskar was assessed at the Northern General Hospital on the 24^th of April after being caught trying to take his own life by ligature in his halls. He was assessed by two mental health flow co-ordinators who appear to have been called in as the trust had higher than normal levels of admissions through mental health that morning. He was deemed to-be low risk and sent back to his halls a couple of hours later, even though he states to them that he was not sorry for what he had done. We can see at least five occasions in the documentation when the University should have contacted mum, and for some reason they chose not to, and we need to know why. On one of those occasions, Oskar consented to the Wellbeing unit for his information to be shared with family and the GP, neither of us where contacted and three weeks later he was dead. We believe, we are not in receipt of all the information and that things are being withheld. Oskar’s student account, emails as well as his student finance was deleted a few days after he died, not at our request.

Our son did not come to Sheffield to die, he came to learn skills and to meet friends. Oskar is not able to put his side of the story over, therefore as his parents it is out duty to give him a voice. As we know through conversations with him days before, he did not want to die, he wanted to live, have a family and to travel. Universities should have a duty of care and information should be shared within different bodies of the university.  In Oskar’s case it appears that the Halls of residence had not been informed about his disability, he was locked down due to Covid and unable to mix with his friends. This alone would have had detrimental effect on his wellbeing, never mind the fact that there appeared to be copious amount of alcohol consumption in the halls during the time they were locked down.  

There needs to be a duty of care, especially when a student is classed as disabled and vulnerable. We thought our son was safe and that someone would be looking out for him and that they would have contacted his mum should he have had any issues, both academically and socially.  They would have contacted us quickly enough had he not paid his rent. A brain injury is devastating at any time, but Oskar appears to have had ongoing problems especially if he drank heavily, he would take risks and make bad choices, all of which he would be deeply remorseful about the following day. Behavioural changes for anyone with a brain injury should be a red flag, and again we should have been alerted.

We do not want any other parent to go through what we have. In our opinion if you are liable for students rent then you are responsible for their behaviour and parents should be contacted to support or remove their child if there is a health breakdown of any kind. We must be Oskar’s voice in this procedure, and we feel missed opportunities must be questioned and hopefully this will prevent this happening to anyone else. Had any of us in the family been informed about any of the incidents regarding Oskar we would have brought him home to receive help and we believe he would still be alive.

Thank you for taking the time to read, please support if you can and please, please share.

Maxine, Gary and Family