Professionals 'collectively failed' to protect Keanu Williams

Keanu Williams was discovered to have 37 injuries sustained over a period of days after paramedics were called to a house in Birmingham in January 2011. He died later that night.

Rebecca Shuttleworth was sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of his murder in June.

The review by Birmingham's Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) found that social workers and health professionals “collectively failed” to prevent Keanu’s death.

The different agencies became “sidetracked” and failed to meet the standards of basic good practice when they should have reported their concerns, the review said.

The report stated that while Keanu’s death could not have been “predicted”, he was “likely" to suffer significant harm.

It notes that Keanu should have been made subject of a child protection plan on “at least two occasions” to address “issues of neglect and physical harm”. This included when Shuttleworth sought medical treatment for Keanu for what she described as “bumps and falls due to unsteadiness”, and when receiving treatment for a burn to his foot.

Despite Shuttleworth claiming the burn was caused “accidentally by a hot radiator” a Health Overview Report, based on medical evidence, concluded her explanation was not credible.

Four days before his death in January 2011, nursery staff saw “a number of marks and bruises” on Keanu’s body and thought he was “distressed” but they believed Shuttleworth’s explanations and decided not to press the issue any further.

The SCR found “a lack of focus on children and their welfare” by professionals, and criticised “poor communications between and within agencies”. A lack of confidence among professionals in challenging parents and shortcomings in recording systems and practice were also noted.

The report makes eight recommendations for changes to current practice, procedures and training, including that agencies involved in the case review their procedures for “challenge, internal and external disagreement, and escalation and whistleblowing”.

A further recommendation states that Birmingham LSCB undertake a full review of the functioning of its frontline core child protection service to ensure that it focuses on the “child’s journey”.

Jane Held, chair of Birmingham LSCB, apologised for “totally unacceptable and unnecessary failures” and promised to learn from Keanu’s case.

She said: “It’s not sufficient to say we will learn the lessons. Keanu died in 2011 but we know many children are still not safe enough in Birmingham. We owe it to Keanu and his extended family to redouble our efforts and actually change practice in every agency and service that had contact with him.

“There are no quick fixes and it requires collective effort by all partners to create the workforce we need with the right practice skills and enough capacity to do the job well.

“We have already taken action in a range of ways. However, now we need to achieve radical change by listening to children and young people and by working closely with the staff that do the job every day. 

“We need to create the right conditions to support all our staff to put their responsibilities to safeguard children and promote their welfare first and foremost.”

Peter Hay, acting strategic director of children, young people and families at Birmingham City Council, added: "Today’s report into the tragic death of Keanu Williams is a further blight upon this city’s reputation, as we have failed to meet the basic expectation that our children are safe. For this we are unequivocally sorry. 

"We accept too, that given our record in failing to improve children’s services that our apology may ring hollow and any assurance of lessons learned or other such statement is meaningless. We therefore want today’s report, into a death two years ago, to be the point of real change in children’s services.

"The city council fully supports the statement made by the safeguarding board: we will play our part in the action plan and be held to account accordingly.

"We know that we have to address how the council will make more of a difference to the safety of children in this city, which has been inadequate in its Ofsted rating since 2009. Following the changes we made to leadership of the service in June 2013, we know more about what needs to be different in the work done to protect children."