BATTERED baby Levi Rose would not have died had warnings from his family been heeded sooner, it was claimed today.

Five-month-old Levi died when he suffered two fatal skull fractures, caused either by vigorous shaking or blows to the head.

His parents Christopher Rose and Kelly Catlow were jailed for six years and three-and-a-half years respectively for killing their baby son and child cruelty.

The parents were from Accrington but had been living in Cronkshaw Street, Burnley, when Levi died.

A report by Lancashire's Area Child Protection Committee concluded that there had been a "breakdown in communication" between the various agencies involved and the baby's family.

The committee included representatives of social services, the probation service, the police and health workers.

The report states that "all the agencies involved were providing a good level of appropriate support to the young family but that information or knowledge held by individual workers, and by the family themselves, was not fully shared.

"The situation was further complicated by the attempts of the parents to mislead professionals about the extent of their problems."

The report adds that even if all the information had been shared it "may not necessarily have altered the course of events which culminated in Levi's death".

However, baby Levi's aunt, Carole Brine, of Huncoat, said members of the family warned social services staff about the dangers they thought the child was in - and the death was avoidable.

"More or less the whole family had doubts," she said. "I was complaining about the way (another of their children) was being treated. The father was not there and the mother could not cope. "His clothes were not clean and he was not changed regularly.

"Obviously, Levi's parents fooled social services but they should have listened to the family's complaints."

Her common-law-husband Andrew added: "We need to see the report and then have words with our solicitor. If it turns out that they have admitted doing something wrong and it has led to a child dying, they must in some way be responsible for that child's death.

"Fobbing us off with a report saying 'lessons must be learnt' is not good enough."

The chairman of Lancashire social services committee, County Councillor Doreen Pollitt, said senior social workers would visit both sides of the family to go through the findings and recommendations.

These include reinforcing the need for all agencies to communicate information regarding domestic violence involving children and clarifying procedures for health staff dealing with suspicious injuries to children.

She has asked for the review and its recommendations to go to the next meeting of the special cases sub-committee on January 16.

Lessons from the baby Levi case had to be learnt not just in Lancashire but across the country, according to Burnley MP Peter Pike. He said it was regrettable that it had taken so long to get to the report by the child protection committee.

He added: "We have to make sure the lessons area learnt, not only to prevent such a case happening again in Lancashire but in the rest of the country.

"We need to do something to ensure those lessons are used effectively. It's worrying when different agencies are involved, all with different bits of information, when if they had been pieced together they could have acted differently."

Mr Pike said he would be contacting the county council to look at the full report to satisfy himself that all reasonable lessons have been learnt from the tragic case. "We want to ensure it will never happen again although there can be no cast-iron guarantee," he said.

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