Haringey 'missed chances' to help young killer

A serious case review (SCR) into the circumstances behind the then 15-year-old fatally stabbing 21-year-old Steven Grisales in a row over throwing conkers in 2011, found that social workers missed chances to remove the teenager from his unstable home environment.

The boy, who is referred to as “CH” in the report, denied being the killer but was found guilty at an Old Bailey trial in 2012.

While the independent author of the SCR Alyson Leslie concludes that the involvement of the boy in the murder “could not have been predicted”, her report outlines a raft of failings by Haringey Council dating back to 2006 to intervene and support him.

This coincides with a period of failure of the council’s children’s services revealed during the Baby Peter Connelly scandal.

Failures include missing opportunities to remove CH from his "chaotic" family life.

This included Haringey children’s services not acting on “repeated requests” by a social worker involved in the case to intervene.

The SCR describes this as “an unacceptable level of performance" that placed CH and other children in the family at risk.

There were also failures to address his offending behaviour, and the risk of harm he was presenting to himself and others.

In describing CH as “a troubled, displaced and stressed young man with a growing history of aggressive actions and criminal behaviour” the SCR detailed how he had little concept of the link between his actions and consequences.

This included allegations of "aggressive, sexualised assaults" on girls at school and being "implicated in crimes involving knives and guns".

He also had convictions for burglary and assault and had been arrested for other incidents including drugs offences, theft and gun and knife crime.

The SCR also revealed he had run away from home several times, and had self-harmed in March 2011.

A request was made to place CH in secure accommodation in 2010 but it was so “poorly formulated” that it was rejected, the SCR found.

The report said: "CH was on a worrying trajectory of violence, offending, disengagement and rootlessness and he was seeking increasingly to identify with gang culture.

"He was at risk of harming someone or of being harmed."

The SCR concludes that CH should have been removed from his home “at least two years” before he killed Steven Grisales.

Residential schooling was one option the report says should have been considered.

A spokesperson for Haringey Council said: “We accept the findings of the review, which makes it clear that we should have taken more robust action both to support the child in this case and to ensure that harmful behaviour was properly addressed, and we are sorry that we failed to do so.

“This case occurred at a time when children’s services in Haringey were not operating as effectively as they should have been.

The spokesperson said a number of improvements have been made since the case.

"These include additional measures to ensure that the child’s perspective is reflected at the heart of our work and support for families from an earlier stage to prevent difficulties from escalating," the spokesperson added.