News

Failures by doctors, who treated Victoria, to pass on key information to social services led team manager Carole Baptiste to send the eight-year-old home from hospital.

In a closing summary to the inquiry, Baptiste's solicitor Peter Herbert said she could "only be as good as" the information she received from the Central Middlesex and North Middlesex hospitals.

He highlighted consultant paediatrician Mary Rossiter's failure to communicate her concerns properly before Victoria's discharge from North Middlesex Hospital, adding that if Baptiste had been aware of them "it is likely that another course of events would have been adopted".

Any team leader "no matter how diligent" would have taken the same course of action as Baptiste, once the hospital had said Victoria wanted to go home and was well enough to be discharged, and once they knew the child protection team had spoken to Carl Manning, he said.

Baptiste's failure to read Victoria's case file properly was an error, but Herbert said it was acceptable that Baptiste had expected Lisa Arthurworrey to manage the case capably. Baptiste had been suffering a mental illness at the time of Victoria's case and "therefore all her failings, such as they are, must be seen in that light," Herbert concluded.

Meanwhile, Rachel Crasnow, representative for Haringey team leader Angella Mairs, who carried out one supervision session with Arthurworrey, disputed the latter's claims that Mairs removed the final contact sheet from Victoria's file after she died.

Mairs had no reason to destroy the document because it had not been her decision to close the file and it would not have incriminated her said Crasnow. Arthurworrey's account was also undermined by her failure to report the incident to a manager and her claim that Mairs had torn up the document in front of her and another member of staff. No sensible person would destroy evidence in front of other people, she said.