More staff in safeguarding team after Star Hobson and Arthur Labinjo-Hughes deaths

Deputy Mayor of West Yorkshire for Policing and Crime, Alison Lowe, said almost 80 people had been added to the force’s safeguarding team following the deaths of Keighley one-year-old Star Hobson and six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, who lived in the West Midlands.

Both youngsters died at the hands of their carers in 2020.

Ms Lowe told a health and wellbeing board she and Mayor of West Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin, with the Mayorality, established last year, having taken on police and crime commissioner powers, want to ensure police and partners are embedding the recommendations into their way of working in trying to prevent similar tragedies.

It was their job to hold the police to account on the issue, she said.

“One of the things Tracy and I have done when we got the learning report for Star Hobson and Arthur Labinjo-Hughes is that we asked the police what their response was, and we have been reassured that they are really clear about the responsibilities that fall to them as a result of that report, not just in Bradford, but wider,” said Ms Lowe.

The review panel made eight recommendations, among them establishing expert-led, multi-agency child protection units.

The report had identified that failings in how agencies worked together meant concerns raised by wider family members about physical abuse were not properly investigated by police and social workers.

Ms Lowe, who was detailing Ms Brabin’s new Police and Crime Plan to members of Calderdale Health and Well being Board, said she had spoken to police this month about some of the detail of the work they were doing.

“They’ve grown their safeguarding team by a further 79 staff and they are really wanting to embed the recommendations, not just the local ones, but also the national ones, and they are working through that with their safeguarding team.

“It is work in progress, there’s lots of learning in there for all of us,” she said.

Ms Lowe said partnership working was so important to preventing incidents like the children’s deaths from happening.

“That partnership is critical because we keep on having these terrible, terrible cases and it appears the lessons are not being learned, and it shames us all.

“I don’t want my legacy to be that I presided over a force that failed to listen and failed to learn,” she said.

She and the Mayor were acutely aware of the need for the recommended changes to be made and to hold the police to account in their aspect of it, said Ms Lowe.