CHILD care professionals have said 'sorry, we let you down' to a vulnerable boy who ended up half-blind through neglect and wrote a heartbreaking 'help me' message on his bedroom wall.

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A Serious Case Review into the actions of social workers, health workers, teachers and other child care professionals, due to be published on Tuesday found that there were crucial communication failures between various agencies and several opportunities missed to stop the neglect over a period of years.

Leading child care experts from Stockton have revealed that they met the child from Thornaby in person to apologise.

The boy, now aged either 12 or 13, had been diagnosed with a juvenile arthritis condition from the age of five and, despite the fact that the disease had the potential to leave him crippled and blind, he repeatedly missed appointments which caused medics to raise the alarm on three occasions.

The review found that:

  • Medics had repeatedly failed to give enough information about the potential seriousness of the child's condition to social workers and other agencies and were never explicit that his sight was at risk.
  • Social workers missed opportunities to properly investigate conditions in the home, and did not even go upstairs to check the bedroom. Social workers closed the case after medics raised the alarm on two occasions with no effective action taken.
  • Teachers failed to pass on information about the worrying state of the boy's appearance, smell and hygiene when he switched schools, which could have led to an earlier intervention.

The report had outlined a number of procedures to ensure better communication between medics, teachers, social workers and other child care professionals to ensure more robust action is taken in future.

An unnamed manager of a team of Stockton Borough Council social workers who decided that no further action should be taken after a doctor first raised concerns had already been dismissed by the council before the case came to light. However the Serious Case Review report which criticises the manager will now be passed to the Health Care Professionals Council, a professional standards watchdog.

There was good news revealed in the report when it emerged the boy from Thornaby, near Stockton, has regained some of his sight following an operation on his eye and is now doing well in a loving environment. His much younger half-sister is also thriving.

The case first came to light last September when Gillian Hendry and Craig Dick, the mother and step-father of the boy, known only as Child H in the report, were jailed for two-and-a-half years and two years respectively for child cruelty last September. Judge Howard Crowson agreed that the case was so serious that the couple, both 34 from Teesdale Terrace, Thornaby, should be named, even if it inadvertently identified the child and his then two-year-old half-sister. Photographs showing the appalling state of the fly-infested family home littered with bin bags, trodden-in food and abandoned nappies and one room having been used as a toilet, made national headlines.

A social worker's report was later passed to The Northern Echo which revealed that when a social worker finally gained access to the house on August 21, 2013 she noticed he had gone blind in one eye. The police were called and a message saying 'help me' was found scrawled on a wall outside the child's bedroom.

Jane Humphries, Stockton council's corporate director of children, education and social care, revealed that since the case was reported at least one consultant doctor had contacted her directly to ensure another worrying case was dealt with properly. She had gone in person to apologise to the boy. She said: "If everyone had done their jobs properly this wouldn't have happened."

Colin Morris, independent chairman of the Stockton Local Safeguarding Children Board, also spoke to the child and said he was an "amazing child" who was now doing well. He said: "There were too many missed opportunities. Communication between agencies was not good enough. It was basic stuff."

Councillor Ann McCoy, Stockton council’s Cabinet Member for Children and Young People, said: “We are sorry that in this case we fell short of the safeguarding standards that children in our borough deserve. We fully accept the findings of the report and recognise that it is important that lessons are learned."

Jean Golightly, Executive Nurse, NHS Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), Cath Siddle, director of nursing, patient safety and quality at North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust and director of nursing at South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust, Ruth Holt, all expressed sadness at the case and a desire to improve communication.