HAPYBABY

Mother and lodger cleared of murdering battered boy

BABYS

The mother of a 17-month-old boy who suffered a catalogue of injuries and died from a broken back despite being on the child protection register was cleared yesterday of his murder on the orders of a judge.
The 27-year-old woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had already admitted allowing the death of a child at her home in north London last year. Yesterday, Judge Stephen Kramer QC directed an Old Bailey jury to find her not guilty of murder after hearing submissions following nearly two months of evidence.
The judge also ordered the woman's lodger, Jason Owen, 36, to be cleared of murder.
However, jurors still have to consider a murder charge against the mother's 32-year-old boyfriend, who also cannot be named for legal reasons.
He and Owen also deny causing or allowing the death of a child.
Judge Kramer said: "After hearing submissions I have decided there is insufficient evidence against [the mother] and Jason Owen for the case against them on count one to continue."
The mother will be sentenced on December 15 and faces up to 14 years in prison. Jurors have heard how the boy had been placed on the child protection register with Haringey social services nine months before his death.
The mother was investigated for assault but was told the charges would be dropped a day before the child was found dead in his cot on the morning of August 3 last year.
A postmortem examination revealed he had a broken back, eight fractured ribs, missing fingernails and toenails, multiple bruises and an injury to the inside of his mouth. He had also swallowed one of his own teeth. The court heard that his back had been broken by slamming him down over a bent knee or a bannister, which would have left him paralysed.
It is claimed he was taken to hospital three times in the months before his death after being repeatedly beaten and abused. The child was last seen by social services on July 30 and by a paediatrician two days before his death.
Sally O'Neill QC, prosecuting, told the jury that the boy was taken to a child development clinic at St Ann's hospital, Haringey, on August 1.
By that time he had eight fractured ribs and a broken back, injuries that would have left him in terrible pain and unable to move his legs.
However, the locum consultant paediatrician, Sabah Alzayyat, did not examine the child properly because he was thought to be "miserable and cranky". O'Neill said the injuries should have been obvious: "This could not fail to have been observed by a competent doctor who had examined him properly."
His mother had told the jury that she had not seen the child's injuries, and did not know who caused them, but felt she should have protected the boy.

Getting the kids in shape
If 10-year-olds fixated on body image worry us, we need to address the adult culture they grow up in
The late Sir Richard Doll, who discovered the link between smoking and lung cancer, was ruminating some years ago on Desert Island Discs about how to stop children smoking. He said: "Find out what the tobacco industry supports and don't do it, and find out what they object to and do it." The tobacco industry, then as now, loved nothing more than a chance to sound decent by bugling its commitment to keeping children away from cigarettes. But however much you go on about the purity of young lungs, it is meaningless if you go on to make your bread and butter by polluting old ones. If you take Doll literally, this means encouraging eight-year-olds to smoke, then stepping back to see what happens. But given that he averted as many cancer deaths as any scientist in history, he's the boss, even posthumously.
I bring this up because the parallel between the media and its relationship to body image, and tobacco giants and their relationship to fags, is striking. A survey of 150,000 children, undertaken by Ofsted, does present some worrying data - it's troubling to learn, for instance, that 39% of respondents had been bullied at school. But the headline "concern" for the Daily Mail is that a third of 10-year-old girls are worried about their body image. "Just 10 years old ..." reads the headline, "and already anxious about body image."
Culture focuses relentlessly on three things: sex, buying pointless things, and how to eat and drink incessantly without getting fat. That's the beating heart of our collective existence, and the more shaming and trivial it is, the more call there is to protect children from it, from the very news sources that trivialised it. Their argument: children are insufficiently mature to process complicated and sometimes conflicting body image messages. But it is unrealistic to see childhood as, ideally, existing in a chamber of purity, insulated from the murky impetuses of the adult world. Who could live in this culture and not imbibe any of it? Who could read, day after day, about X's cellulite and Y's paunch, about carbs, sweeteners and pear shapes, and breathe none of this in? We should be pleased that 10-year-olds are fixating on their body shapes, because not to do so would make them alarmingly unobservant or else sociopathic.
Now I wouldn't mind that headline if it were followed with: "It's probably our fault; after all, we're the ones who just won't stop going on about sodding calories." But no, anonymous "critics" apparently blame "super-slim models in the fashion and advertising industries". It just gets more and more otiose. Does one blame a slim model for being slim? Nope, in all likelihood, she was born like that and, in the unlikely event that she is anorexic, you would no more blame her than you would blame anyone else with a mental illness. If you must find someone to blame, at least go to the industries rather than the clothes horses, but the idea that you could blame fashion and advertising, while ignoring a middle-brow medium that is pretty much kept afloat by those titans of thinness is daft. It's just hypocrisy shovelled upon wilful myopia.
But - and here's where the tobacco analogy is truly forceful - the more money an organisation makes out of a full-blossoming adult pathology (whether that's smoking or being on a constant, not very effective, diet), the more sincerely they wax about protecting the young from this same toxin. Find out what the Daily Mail supports and do the opposite, in other words: actively encourage 10-year-olds to worry about their body image. They are far more likely to end up fat than they are anorexic. Address adults instead: get them to stop worrying about their love handles, and see whether, somewhere down the line, 10-year-olds don't follow

Family courts may be opened up to media
Jack Straw expected to unveil plans to make family justice system more transparent
The government is preparing to open family courts up to greater media scrutiny, in response to criticism that the current set up is overly secretive.
The justice secretary, Jack Straw, is expected to unveil plans to make the family justice system more transparent, but the government is yet to set a date for the policy change.
The move would spark anger among some child protection groups but would be welcomed by campaigners who accuse the courts of administering "secretive justice".
In an interview with the Times today, Sir Mark Potter, the president of the family division, called for greater openness in hearings on whether children should be taken into care.
"It is my firm belief that when people see these cases in action, and the extreme care with which they are dealt - and the fact that so much of what is said comes from interested and disgruntled parties not reporting the matter objectively - it can do nothing but good for the system," he said.
But Ian Johnson, the chief executive of the British Association of Social Workers, said he feared the move could threaten children's right to privacy.
"The nature of some of the information dealt with in family courts should just not be in the public domain. I just don't agree with this argument that having the press there will result in better social services."
Speaking at the Labour conference in Manchester last month, Straw indicated that reforms were afoot.
"In the very sensitive area of the family courts I think we can shed more light whilst preserving the imperative of the welfare of the child."
The Ministry of Justice began a public consultation on openness in family courts in June last year, but the government is yet to respond to its findings.
MPs to vote on smacking ban

A young child holds a stop smacking banner. Photograph: Rebecca Naden/PA
Moves to ban smacking come before parliament today with MPs facing a vote to abolish the defence of "reasonable punishment".
The House of Commons will debate a cross-party amendment to the children and young persons bill, which would give children the same protection against physical assault as adults.
An alliance of children's charities said a clear majority of MPs would support the abolition of smacking in a free vote.
The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats said their MPs could vote with their consciences, but the government is expected to impose a whip requiring Labour MPs to back the current law.
Legislation in 2004 allowed parents to hit their children as long as they do not leave a bruise, graze or red mark.
More than 100 Labour backbenchers have signed a private statement urging ministers to allow a free vote on this amendment, at the report stage of the bill.
Kevin Barron, the Labour chairman of the Commons health committee, said: "How can reforms to stop hurting animals be more worthy of a free vote than a reform to stop hurting the most vulnerable human beings?"
Last week the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child criticised the government for failing to prohibit corporal punishment in the family.
Children's minister Beverley Hughes said: "Like most people – including most parents – we agree that smacking isn't a good thing and other means of controlling children's behaviour are preferable and probably more effective.
"But neither do we support a ban which would make smacking a crime, and criminalise decent parents for a mild smack. The majority of parents support this common sense approach.
"Both the Crown Prosecution Service and the Association of Chief Police Officers agree that the law as it stands gives them the power and discretion to act in the best interests of the child and the public interest."
Already 19 other European countries that have banned corporal punishment in the family.
The vote comes after an NSPCC survey last night revealed about 160,000 teenagers over the age of 15 have recently been beaten by parents trying to assert discipline.
The children's charity poll of more than 1,900 parents showed one in eight children of all ages were smacked during the past six months.
The survey found the peak age for hitting was when the child was four, but the charity was surprised to find how much physical punishment persisted into the mid-teens.
About 7% of young people aged 15-17 had been hit by a parent in the last six months - equivalent to 160,000 pupils going through the final years in secondary school.
Dame Mary Marsh, the charity's chief executive, said: "Parents who are hitting teenagers are likely to have been smacking their children since they were small - so it clearly isn't working. We fear these parents are hitting their children harder and harder. "
Her view was supported by Rebecca Boden, 50, professor of management at University of Wales Institute in Cardiff, who is suffering brain damage after beatings as a child.
A recent scan revealed scars from head trauma that was probably caused by persistent beatings from her father.
She said: "It started when I was about 10. My father used to punch my head behind the ear - so it wouldn't leave a mark.
"I was a tiny slip of a girl and my father was a 6ft 2in man. I would be thrown to the ground with the force of his blows. He used to literally fell me.
"To adult eyes, I was being punished for being naughty. His blows were considered smacking and my teacher told me it was character building.
"I endured eight years of being punched and hit around the head. I was so terrified that well into my teens, I would wet myself at the sight of a raised fist."
'I endured years of being punched in the head'
John Carvel meets a woman who was smacked as a child and still bears the scars

Rebecca Boden, now 50, is a professor of critical management at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff. As a successful academic, with a settled family life, she is probably one of the last people you would expect to be keeping a dark secret about her childhood.
She said: "Ten years ago, I started to show signs of possible multiple sclerosis and so I had a brain scan to see what was wrong with me.
"It was a horrible moment when I looked at the results. The scan of my brain looked like a snowstorm.
"The doctor told me the marks were scars, possibly the result of low level brain damage from a previous head trauma. It was then I told the doctor how my father used to hit me across the head.
"It started when I was about 10, my father used to punch my head behind the ear – so it wouldn't leave a mark.
"I was a tiny slip of a girl, my father a 6ft 2in man and I would be thrown to the ground with the force of his blows. He used to literally fell me.
"To adult eyes, I was being punished for being naughty; his blows were considered smacking and my teacher told me it was character building.
"I left home as soon as I could to escape the violence but I endured eight years of being punched and hit around the head. I was so terrified that well into my teens, I would wet myself at the sight of a raised fist.
"I didn't tell anyone about my childhood until I was 30. Once I started to open up about it, I realised that many other of my friends had similar experiences too.
"I will never really know whether my brain damage was due to the constant blows to the head as a child and teenager but it is a likely cause. The physical scars can't be healed and the mental scars linger.
"It's true that attitudes towards children have changed enormously since I was a child. But the belief that parents should be allowed to punish children by hitting them is an outmoded view from that era when teachers threw wooden board dusters at pupils and violence towards children was considered normal.
"Of course not every parent who smacks their child is punching them so hard they fall to the floor, but trying to tell people how hard you can legally smack your child is impossible. I may well have brain damage (but wouldn't have known that but for my health scare) and I also bear emotional scars.
"People need to understand that banning hitting children does not mean that prisons will be overflowing with parents. That's nonsense. It is about changing attitudes and protecting children from those who are as violent as my father was to me. In 2008, children are still getting hit and some are getting hit very hard."
Fostering better care for vulnerable children
The new children's bill offers an important opportunity to ensure foster carers are subject to the same controls as other care workers, writes Robert Tapsfield


Foster carers today face increased demands in their work with children, Tapsfield says. Photograph: Stephen Simpson/Getty Images
We send our children to school safe in the knowledge their teachers are registered with the General Teaching Council and must comply with standards set by the body. If they do not, they can be struck off. The same goes for childminders, nursery nurses and social workers. But not foster carers.The General Social Care Council (GSCC), which registers social care professionals, is about to start registering domiciliary care workers because they "work mostly unsupervised and have a high level of contact with service users in their own homes". These issues are just as pertinent when it comes to fostering. Foster carers, however, are not on the list of groups to be registered.According to the GSCC's website, registration of domiciliary care workers will prevent "unsuitable people being retained in the workforce". It will also help to raise standards of care by promoting ongoing training and learning, and "enforcing accountability and compliance with the code of practice for social care workers". If these are the criteria for registering with the council, it is a great oversight not to extend this requirement to foster carers. Not only would it improve safeguards for children, by holding a central record of any concerns about foster carers' practice, but it would also give foster carers the status and recognition their role deserves.
Foster carers today face increased demands and responsibilities in their work with some of society's most vulnerable children. 21st century fostering means adding a professional approach to the task of caring for or parenting a child or young person. Foster carers are expected to provide a high-quality service, attend training and reflect on their practice. But too often they do not get the recognition from colleagues they deserve.Moreover, if a foster carer wants to change fostering service, they have to go through the whole approval process again. Registration would mean foster carers would not have to be reapproved when they move. The process can take up to a year which puts people off reapplying. This means we are losing some excellent and much needed foster carers. Conversely, a foster carer who has come to the notice of authorities because of worries about their practice can move areas, be approved, and carry on fostering with no one at their new fostering service knowing of these past concerns.Today is the government's chance to give foster carers this status and recognition by introducing a central register held by the GSCC, as the children and young persons bill reaches its report stage in the House of Commons.
Registration is key to driving up standards and improving support and training for foster carers with obvious knock-on benefits for children in care. I hope that MPs debating this bill use the opportunity to ensure no corners are cut in decision making about some of society's most vulnerable children.
• Robert Tapsfield is the chief executive of Fostering Network charity. Their annual conference, Fostering Success, takes place in Cardiff on October 17-18. For more information or to book a place email conference@fostering.net or visit fostering.net/conference

A brave face
Despite deprivation and tragedy, the pupils of Gorton Mount primary find much to smile about

BABYS
Pupils at the Manchester school are supported through an 'ethos of caring'. Photograph: Christopher Thomond
Picture a primary school in a deprived area of Manchester, where a third of the 450 pupils are considered "at risk". Add to that a tragedy involving children from the school, followed by the removal into immigration custody of a nine-year-old boy, at a time when teachers say he was showing signs of recovering from the trauma of his life in the country of his birth.
You might imagine such a school to be sombre. From the outside at least, Gorton Mount primary creates that impression - but after a day spent with staff and pupils, it is clear that this is a happy place.
Manchester is known as the asbo capital of the UK, and Gorton, where the Channel 4 series Shameless was filmed, has more than its share of problems. Staff say they are as likely to give advice to parents on debt management and nutrition as on academic progress.
Carol Powell has been head of Gorton Mount since 2002. In August, when we first spoke, Powell was embroiled in consultations with lawyers and activists, trying to prevent the removal to Iran of a nine-year-old pupil who, along with his mother, brother and sister, had been placed in a detention centre. (The family is now free and the boy is back in class.) Two weeks before, Powell had attended the funeral of a Gorton parent, who had died under a train. The head was also involved in several child protection cases.
When Powell took over Gorton Mount, she became the seventh head in six years and the school was in special measures; 66% of pupils are entitled to free school meals. Then, as now, more than 40 languages were spoken and pupil mobility is high. One boy had been to 17 primary schools before arriving at Gorton Mount, because his mother was running away from an abusive partner.
Powell oversaw 20 changes of teaching staff in the first two years and now cannot speak highly enough of the team she has around her. Describing them as "super professionals, inside and outside school", she says they "put their own needs on hold in favour of the needs of the children".
According to Hew-ting Yuen, who has taught there for five years: "All learning starts with the child's emotions. We offer them trust and constant support, and my door is still open to children I taught last year and the year before."
Steve Williams is a learning mentor. At 42, it is his first job in education. He left school with no qualifications, but says his own experiences (he is African-Caribbean, brought up in a tough, mainly white, area of Manchester) helps him to guide children through similar minefields. He is full of praise for the head, saying she "orchestrates the ethos of caring that runs throughout the school".
Powell says her team includes every member of staff, including the caretaker and lunchtime organisers. Two of the latter, both local women, have been promoted to learning mentors. One, Dee Malloch, 35, is now studying for a Open University degree and says she is "learning along with the children".
The other, Sharon Egan, lives on a council estate that borders the school and often acts as a go-between if problems arise with parents. Egan specialises in attendance problems, and tells of visiting the home of one pupil who was not in school. "The landlord wanted the family out, so he took all the windows out, there was a hole in the bathroom wall and the place was freezing," she says.
This is where the school can step in. The play therapy room is a pivotal point of Gorton Mount. Two days a week, Christine Taylor, a childcare consultant and therapist, treats children who have suffered trauma. A bright, jumbled room, it is littered with toys and, says Taylor, the child is in "charge of the play".
Although she does not speak of individual cases, the playroom was crucial in picking up the pieces of a catastrophic episode in the life of Gorton Mount.
In April last year, a 12-year-old girl, a former pupil, was shot dead by her 16-year-old brother. The killing was a terrible accident; the boy had found a gun hidden in the family's garden and had been playing with it, close to his sister and eight-year-old twin sisters, when it went off. The twins attended Gorton Mount and, before being imprisoned for three years after pleading guilty to possessing the weapon, the dead girl's mother told the Guardian that the twins had received play therapy at the school and described the staff as "brilliant".
I suggest to the head that critics might say the emphasis on emotional needs is at the expense of academic achievement. Powell points out that children who lead chaotic lives are usually too anxious to be taught and need an ordered atmosphere before they can start to learn.
I joined pupils for lunch in the dining hall. Two eight-year-old boys, Brendan and Connor, were swapping stories about their weekend. Connor who wants to be a mechanic, thinks the school is "mint", while Brendan says the teachers are nice and friendly. Asked if she likes school, seven-year-old Kierra declares she "loves it". Ten-year-old Kaylum thinks the gardening and piano lessons are the best, and I ask him to name his favourite piece of music. He thinks for a moment. "Ode to Joy. That's by Beethoven, you know."