Baby P Failure Case Study

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My first report will be on the failure to protect Baby P. He suffered horrific abuse, yet the same social work department that was criticised in the Victoria Climbie case never took him into care despite a number of warning signals and injuries. The failure to protect Baby P was because of poor practice by health professionals, social workers, police and lawyers rather than systematic breakdown, a serious case review found. Professionals in the London borough of Haringey saw the boy 60 times before his death, caused by his mother and stepfather, and the inquiry found agencies communicated with each other and procedures were largely followed. However, there was a poor flow of information in some areas. Despite being on the child protection…show more content…
Christophe Champenois, aged 36, rammed three-year-old Bastien into the device and switched it on, allegedly as punishment for misbehaviour. The child's 29-year-old mother, Charlene Cotte, told investigators she did a puzzle with her daughter, and Champenois used the internet while their son screamed inside the whirring washing machine. She was jailed for 12 years, for "aiding and abetting murder and violence". Cotte said that when her ex-husband removed Bastien from the machine and noticed he was no longer breathing, he said: "At least he won't bother us anymore." It was Champenois himself who called emergency services in the town of Germigny-l'Eveque, east of Paris, in November 2011, saying he had a "small problem" as his son had fallen down the stairs. Champenois said he had given his son a bath and that the child must have drowned because he had water coming out of his nostrils. But the victim's older sister, then five, told the doctor: "Daddy put Bastien in the washing machine because he was naughty at school", a version she maintained throughout the investigation. A neighbour who came to the apartment to help described the child as "frozen, completely naked. He was all white, limp, practically like a toy. Cotte's lawyer Gerard Zbili described her as a "broken woman who lost the child that she loved" but who was unable to

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