A woman was convicted of manslaughter after her seven-year-old son died alone in Birmingham and “gasping for air” in a garden after suffering an asthma attack.
Laura Heath “gives priority to her heroin and crack cocaine addiction”, which led to the neglect of Hakim Hussein, who died in the Nechels area of the city on November 26, 2017.
During the trial in Coventry Crown Court, jurors were shown an image depicting Heath reconfiguring one of Hakim’s inhalers as a crack pipe. The 40-year-old man was convicted of manslaughter on Friday after admitting four counts of child abuse before the trial, including failing to provide proper medical supervision and exposing Hakim to class A drugs.
During the trial, it turned out that Birmingham social services knew about Hakim and that at a conference to protect the child two days before his fatal collapse, a school nurse told the meeting that “he could die over the weekend.”
Social workers voted at the conference to act in Hakim’s favor, and it was agreed that the family’s social worker would speak to Heath on Monday, but the boy was dead at the time.
A serious review of Hakim and his mother’s contact agencies is expected to be published within weeks of his death.
Hakim died at a friend’s house, where his mother was staying, after going out at night in the fresh air, wearing only a top and bottom of pajamas in almost sub-zero temperatures.
The defendant, who went to bed after smoking heroin, said her son usually woke her up at night when he was struggling to breathe. His body was found the next morning and there was no sign of the asthma medication with him.
Pharmacy records reveal that in the last two months of his life, Hakim received only a third of his mother’s prescribed asthma medication.
Evidence also shows that Heath exposed her son to certain causes of asthma, such as smoke, dust and low temperatures, and that he inhaled tobacco smoke in the hours before his death.
Laura Heath. Photo: West Midlands / Pennsylvania Police
Toxicological evidence also shows that he ingested heroin, crack cocaine and cannabis, most likely by inhaling secondhand smoke.
Andy Coldrick, head of the Birmingham Children’s Trust, which took over social services for children in early 2018, said: “I think social workers have been working for too long on what they believed to be a partnership with the mother and fraud with regard to substance use, in particular, and Hakim, who had an additional vulnerability zone due to his asthma.
“There were some clearly missed opportunities, [and] some of them are desperately familiar with other cases, “he said, adding that the conference on child protection should have taken place earlier and led to immediate action.
Hakim’s death came months before responsibility was transferred from the council’s failed children’s social services department, after years of poor performance since 2008. This has led to a number of child deaths, such as those of Khyra Ishaq in 2008, Keanu Williams in 2011, and Daniel Pelka in 2012.
“I think child welfare in Birmingham has done some things wrong [in this case] and we worked hard to learn these lessons, “he added. “Because every time we allow this to happen, we lose social workers. I hope we can be modest about the things that went wrong and learn better from it. “
Heath will be convicted next week.
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