The 15-year-old narrowly avoided a detention sentence, after she refused to co-operate with the Youth Offending Service and continually breached her curfew order.
The girl had been sentenced to a supervision order with a curfew earlier this year f
or a number of offences, including being drunk and disorderly, punching and headbutting her boyfriend outside the Wrexham Tesco store and smashing equipment in a Wrexham youth home.
However, she failed to comply with this order on a number of occasions, despite being given a last chance to do so in September.
Magistrates at Wrexham Youth Court heard representations from the Youth Offending Service, who expressed concerns about the girl's safety and said she was "spiralling out of control".
The youth offending team told the court the only way to deal with the teenager was to send her to a detention unit.
Jane Meyers, defending, told the court she agreed and saw no other option.
She said the common thread through was alcohol misuse.
Ms Meyers said the teenager, who had been in care since the age of two, had no previous records until these offences and had found it difficult to adjust over the last two years after leaving her foster home of 10 years and being relocated.
She added her client was very vulnerable and incidents of self harming were becoming more serious.
However, magistrates decided not to send the girl to a detention unit but sentenced her to a 12-month conditional discharge.
They defended the decision, saying they were putting more responsibility on the teenager to prove she could sort herself out with the help of her social workers.
The full article contains 294 words and appears in Evening Leader Wrexham newspaper.
