Police were called to girls’ care home more than 900 times

THE Scottish care home attended by two teenage girls who leapt to their deaths from a bridge had more than 900 police call-outs over the last three years, it was disclosed yesterday.

Neve Lafferty, 15, and Georgia Rowe, 14, jumped more than 100ft from the Erskine Bridge, near Glasgow, into the River Clyde last month.

Both girls were pupils at the Good Shepherd Centre in Bishopton, Renfrewshire, an independent unit a few miles from the bridge. They apparently sneaked out of the centre and made their way to the nearby bridge before jumping to their deaths side by side.

According to figures from Strathclyde Police, officers were called to the care home a total of 920 times in three years.

There were 351 call-outs in 2007 and 348 in 2008.

The number of police visits to the centre this year, calculated up to October 14, so far stands at 221. Of the total number of call-outs, 336 were in connection with missing person incidents, largely to do with children absconding from the unit.

A total of 159 of the 920 incidents ended in either an arrest or a report being sent to the procurator fiscal or the children’s hearing panel.

Some of the call-outs may have centred around minor incidents or events which occurred elsewhere but were reported from the Good Shepherd centre.

The centre is an independent unit owned and managed by its voluntary board of managers. It cares for young girls referred by local authority educational and psychological services, social work departments and children’s hearings.

It is affiliated to the Cora Foundation, a non-profit-making company owned by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Scotland.