Wirral agencies failure over daughter’s death

Agencies involved with a woman who drowned her four-year-old daughter failed to recognise the extent of her mental health problems, a report says.

Laura Fletcher, 23, killed Chloe in a bath at their home in Wirral in April 2009 before trying to kill herself.

An independent report concluded that it was not possible to say whether Chloe’s death could have been prevented.

And staff involved with the family “did not have adequate skills, training or knowledge”, it said.

Fletcher admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility last year and was detained in secure hospital accommodation.

‘Inappropriate and flawed’

Wirral’s Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB), in its serious case review, said it had since emerged she had a mental illness which had been undiagnosed until her detention.

Whilst it said that predicting whether Fletcher would harm her daughter was not possible, the review states that “agencies failed to recognise the extent” of her problems.

As well as criticising Fletcher’s mental health assessment, the LSCB said that concerns about her state of mind were expressed by both of Chloe’s grandmothers.

Its report concluded that “those concerns were not taken seriously enough” and should have helped build a picture of the problems being suffered by the mother.

Wirral’s Children’s Social Care department is also criticised for withdrawing from the case before Chloe’s death because her mother was not co-operating.

It assumed there was no need for family support because other agencies had access to Fletcher but this decision was “inappropriate and flawed”, the report said.

The report did praise “committed and caring” individuals who tried to support the family.

But ultimately professionals involved with Fletcher “did not have the adequate skills, training or knowledge to understand what they were dealing with”, it added.

Howard Cooper, chair of Wirral LSCB, said members were “deeply saddened and very sorry about the death of Chloe”.

“We have no way of knowing whether Chloe’s death could have been prevented, but there are lessons to be learned and we are all committed to working to do all we can to minimise the risk of this happening again.”

Recommendations have been made around a number of issues raised by the report and action in being taken to address them, the LSCB said.

These included a review of staff training on parental mental health problems and an audit of the quality of existing assessments of parents with such problems.