"They need more support than most young people. So just dumping them on a school and saying ‘There you go, have at it,' is not good enough by the government department, but that is what had happened. Forty percent of the studenst at Hato Petera were children from the Waikato region that had been placed there by CYFS, and then CYFS had walked away," Ms Martin says.

She says no school should have more than 5 percent of its roll being children with serious problems.

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Krystal was 12 when she killed herself.

The Auckland foster child had just had a violent argument with her 7-year-old sister over pocket money and both girls were sent to their room without dinner.

At the time, her foster mother knew Krystal was dealing with a lot, including guilt for breaking up her family of eight children after making allegations of sexual abuse against a former caregiver. She was missing her siblings.

But the woman, a caregiver with nine years' experience, felt the little girl from Northland was making progress - she had new friends, new clothes and a new Bebo page.

The last thing anyone expected was for Krystal's younger sister to come back downstairs just hours after the fight saying Krystal was dead.

"Krystal was more emotionally fragile than anyone realised at the time," a Child, Youth and Family manager told the inquest into her death last week. She was the youngest child to take her own life in state care. Social workers were unaware of the suicide risk because of her age, the manager said.

Krystal, whose last name is permanently suppressed to protect her siblings, died in 2008. Her death is yet to be ruled on by the coroner but there seems to be no doubt it was self-inflicted by a method that cannot be made public. Since then, there have been a handful of other pre-teen deaths that are also believed to be suicides, including a 10-year-old who died from a gunshot wound to the head, and a child aged between 5 and 9 who died last year.

"I think that kind of stuns people a bit to think that people that young could commit suicide," says chief coroner Neil MacLean.

"Most people struggle to even understand teen suicide - unless they're a teenager - so this is one of those things that really hit home." Read more

Sources

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• Image: Injury Board