THE five months of little baby Levi Rose's life ended horribly and brutally from head injuries that suggested that he was literally shaken to death.

His parents, teenage mother Kelly Catlow and her 20-year-old boyfriend Christopher Rose, now stand convicted of his killing.

But that is not a sufficient conclusion to this tragedy.

For need it ever have happened?

That question - particularly for the sake of other children - is one that must be answered with a full and open inquiry.

For there is much to suggest that this tragedy was foreseeable - and that the dreadful fate of little Levi might have been avoided.

This child was plainly at risk.

The mother was an inadequate parent with little or no idea about caring for a baby.

The father was a drug-user who beat his partner.

The couple lived in squalor.

Social Services staff were warned even before Levi and his twin sister were born of these dangerous circumstances.

They were involved with the family afterwards - even to the extent of once being on the brink of placing the twins in care after they had been admitted to hospital at Burnley.

Hospital staff were told by an aunt only weeks before Levi's death of the possibility that the children were being physically abused.

All these factors and more spelled out clear warnings.

Yet why were they so inadequately heeded - to the extent that little Levi's life was snuffed out?

There must be an urgent and thorough discovery of the truth.

And it must be out in the open, without any closing of ranks among the professions involved with this case.

The blame must be laid and accepted.

For there is much to suggest that this baby's cruel killers were not the only ones with responsibility for his awful misfortune.

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