A review ordered after the horrific child abuse deaths of Star Hobson and Arthur Labinjo-Hughes has found relatives’ warnings were ‘too often’ disregarded by social services.
Experts concluded that dedicated child protection teams made up of experienced police, healthcare staff and social workers should be set up in every council area to prevent similar tragedies from happening again.
The way child protection is approached in England needs to ‘change fundamentally’, the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel said.
Its national review found that the fatal abuses suffered by Arthur, six, and Star, 16 months, ‘are not isolated incidents’, but reflective of wider problems with poor information sharing and weak decision-making.
The two children suffered horrific deaths at the hands of their parents and step-parents in 2020 despite relatives in both cases raising concerns with the authorities about suspected ongoing abuse in the months before they were killed.
A review was ordered by the Education Secretary as the country reeled from the murder trials which shed shocking light on the abuse perpetrated in each case.
It found that the concerns raised by their wider family members were ‘too often’ disregarded and not properly investigated – with Arthur’s father being considered a ‘protective father’ while complaints about Star’s parents were deemed to be ‘malicious’.
Dedicated child protection teams should be set up in every council area, according to a review into the deaths of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes (pictured right) and Star Hobson (pictured left)
Professionals were increasingly kept at arms length by those perpetrating the abuse, and they failed to identify a ‘pattern of parental disengagement and avoidant behaviour’, the report also found.
It recommends dedicated multi-agency teams staffed by experienced child protection professionals be set up in every local authority area to investigate allegations of serious harm to children.
The review also concluded that the Government should establish a national child protection board to better co-ordinate child protection policy.
In a foreword to the report, review chairwoman Annie Hudson said the current safeguarding system is not broken, but there is too much ambiguity and inconsistency which does not serve children, their families or professionals well.
Prosecutors described the injuries Star suffered as ‘utterly catastrophic’ and ‘unsurvivable’
The heartbroken great-grandfather of murdered Star (pictured together) David Fawcett says he warned social services weeks before her death that she could be the ‘next baby P’
Existing multi-agency safeguarding arrangements ‘are not yet fit for purpose everywhere’, she added.
Emma Tustin and Thomas Hughes: The parents whose abuse of Arthur shocked nation
Emma Tustin, 32, is serving a 29-year prison sentence at HMP Peterborough after being convicted of Arthur’s murder at her home in Solihull, west Midlands, on December 3.
The evil stepmother killed the young boy by repeatedly slamming his head on a hard surface after she and his father Thomas Hughes, 29, force-fed him food laden with salt.
Details of Arthur’s cruel abuse and treatment, including being poisoned with salt, emerged during the Tustin’s trial at Coventry Crown Court and caused widespread shock, revulsion and grief.
The youngster had been subjected to months of ‘unimaginable’ abuse by Hughes and Tustin before he was murdered during lockdown on June 17 last year.
In one haunting video, Arthur was seen struggling to stand before slumping to the floor of the living room.
His father, Hughes, was sentenced to 21 years in prison for manslaughter.
Tustin is currently housed at HMP Peterborough and Hughes at HMP Wakefield
The review was commissioned in December 2021 by Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi following the deaths of Arthur and Star to look at what could be done to prevent things from going so ‘horrifyingly wrong’ in future.
The panel interviewed just under 80 professionals in Bradford, Birmingham and Solihull; the children’s family members, including Star’s mother and her mother’s partner; and drew on 1,500 rapid reviews of serious incidents since it was formed.
It found that child protection work is inherently complex, but the current system does not give professionals the best opportunity at cutting through this complexity ‘to get to the truth of what life is like for children’.
It identified a reliance on quickly pulling together a team from overstretched agencies every time there is a child protection concern, which is ‘certainly inefficient and often ineffective’.
The review noted the importance of challenging assumptions and biases relating to culture, ethnicity, gender and sexuality when safeguarding children.
It said the role of women in perpetrating abuse may have impacted on how professionals perceived the risk to children, ‘given societal beliefs about women as caregivers’.
Arthur was murdered in June 2020 by his stepmother Emma Tustin while his father Thomas Hughes, 29, was found guilty of his son’s manslaughter.
During the trial, the court heard Arthur was subjected to horrific abuse in the months before his death.
He was regularly beaten, starved and deprived of water and food he was given was sometimes laced with salt by Tustin to make it inedible.
The six-year-old suffered an unsurvivable brain injury while in the care of Tustin at her home in Solihull and died on June 16, 2020.
The review said a judgment seemingly became fixed early on that Mr Hughes was a ‘protective father’, which was reasonable at the time but was never challenged when circumstances changed.
Arthur was starved and poisoned before he died at the hands of his stepmother Emma Tustin
The photograph taken by Arthur’s paternal grandmother prompted a referral to social services, however the bruises were put down to ‘play-fighting’ with another youngster
Pictured: Emma Tustin was jailed for at least 29 years after being convicted of murdering Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Arthur’s father Thomas Hughes got 21 years for manslaughter
Star’s mother claims she was killed in jealous rage amid break-up
Star’s mother Frankie Smith has told her family that her partner Savannah Brockhill killed 16-month-old Star in a ‘jealous rage’ because she had tried to end the relationship.
David Fawcett, Star’s great-grandad, told Sky News: ‘This is the horrible thing I’ve recently learned.’
Star’s mother ‘told Savannah that was it. I’m done’, he said.
‘And that was the day when Star passed away… And Frankie has even said ‘she did that because I was leaving her. And it was the only way she could get at me’.’
Social services missed five opportunities to stop Star’s killers in the months before her death on September 22, 2020.
Jurors heard that Smith’s family and friends had growing fears about bruising they saw on the little girl in the months before she died and made a series of complaints to social services.
In each case, Brockhill and Smith managed to convince social workers that marks on Star were accidental or that the complaints were made maliciously by people who did not like their relationship.
Before her death, Star had suffered many serious injuries, skull and rib fractures, and a twice-fractured leg.
The couple would punish the toddler by making her face the wall, though she could barely stand.
They took sadistic pleasure in videoing her as they abused her, filming her from different angles as she dozed off in her chair, toppled out, and hit her head on the floor.
Brockhill set the footage to music and sent it to friends with the caption: ‘I’ve laughed so hard.’
Justice Lambert QC, said Star had become a victim of the couple’s ‘petty squabbles and jealous fights’.
She said Star’s life was marked by ‘neglect, cruelty and injury’ before she was murdered by Brockhill.
Concerns about Arthur’s bruising raised by family members were not taken seriously, photographs of the bruising were not shared between agencies, his voice was not always heard and too many assessments relied on his father’s perspective, it found.
Star was murdered by her mother’s girlfriend Savannah Brockhill at her home in Keighley, West Yorkshire, in September 2020.
Star’s mother Frankie Smith, 20, was found guilty of causing or allowing the youngster’s death.
During the murder trial, prosecutors described how the injuries that caused Star’s death involved extensive damage to her abdominal cavity ’caused by a severe and forceful blow or blows, either in the form of punching, stamping or kicking to the abdomen’ – with all the force of a crashing car.
As doctors fought to save her, they found half her blood supply pooling in her abdomen and damage to her liver, pancreas and kidneys.
The court heard social services missed five opportunities to stop Star’s killers in the months before her death
The newly published review has found that an explanation that concern from a family member might have been malicious and rooted in a dislike of her mother’s same-sex relationship was ‘too easily accepted’.
Bradford children’s social care service was ‘in turmoil’ in 2020, with a high turnover of social workers and a high volume of work affecting quality and contributing to assessments that were ‘too superficial’ and did not address repeated concerns from family members.
Ms Hudson said there are ‘fundamental fault lines’ in the system that need to be addressed.
She said: ‘We’re really clear in our report that the issues that we saw there are also issues that we’ve seen in other instances, and that we believe that the way the system is set up, and the conditions in which practitioners are having to work and make decisions, actually makes it very difficult sometimes for them to really know what was going on and to really work together effectively to protect children.’
Mr Zahawi thanked Arthur and Star’s families for their contributions to the report, and said: ‘We must waste no time learning from the findings of this review – enough is enough.
‘I will set up a new Child Protection Ministerial group, a first and immediate step in responding to these findings, before setting out a bold implementation plan later this year to bring about a fundamental shift in how we support better outcomes for our most vulnerable children and families.’
Star’s mother Frankie Smith, 20, (left) was found guilty of causing or allowing the youngster’s death while Savannah Brockhill (pictured right) was convicted of murdering the 16-month-old
Savannah Brockhill (left) and Frankie Smith (right) were jailed for their roles in Star’s death
Sir Peter Wanless, NSPCC chief executive, said Arthur and Star’s deaths ‘have left a lasting scar on the nation’.
He said: ‘It is heart-breaking that it had to take these tragedies to shine a light on the shortfalls in the child protection system.
‘Now, we must ensure the memory of Arthur and Star acts as a catalyst for the fundamental changes necessary to prevent further deaths.
‘This review lays bare an all-too-familiar story of a system struggling to cope. Social workers, police, health practitioners and teachers, however hard they are working as individuals, know they cannot do this alone.’
Janice Hawkes, independent chairwoman of the Bradford Partnership, apologised for the ‘awful circumstances’ of Star’s death, and said the partnership is ‘entirely committed to improving the safety of children across Bradford’.
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