Lee would still be here’
FAMILY SAY AGENCIES LET THE MURDERED MAN DOWN
revealed problems in communicating between adult and children’s services led to a series of problems.
Lee’s auntie, Lisa Irving, shared a close bond with the 24-year-old and revealed her agony at the findings.
She said: “They have let Lee down. If they had done their jobs then Lee would still be here today.
“Lee could be hard work at times but it should never have come to this. After the age of 18, he sort of fell through the net and it’s upsetting to think it has come to this.
“It is closure in a sense. Hopefully, this report means lessons have been learned and those mistakes won’t happen again. And it should mean no family will have to go through what we went through.”
Until Lee was 18 he was handled by children’s services, but the transition to adult services, which led to him being handed control of his finances in 2014, saw the beginning of problems.
Almost as soon as he took control of his finances his mother, Bev Irving, raised concerns he was being exploited.
Throughout 2014 and 2015 Lee would spend periods at the home of Wheatley, his eventual killer, and his mother Mills at Studdon Walk in Kenton Bar, Newcastle.
Despite concerns raised by his family little was done and, while police visited as Lee lay injured and sedated upstairs, the report says officers were not to know he was in the house.
The report said the family did acknowledge they had been treated well by adult services but felt excluded from some major decisions about Lee’s care with some being taken without family input.
Lisa added: “We miss Lee massively. He left a hole in my heart. To lose someone so young is horrendous and thinking about what he suffered and the people who let him suffer is something I will never get my head around.”
Despite criticisms, the report did identify good practice including adult services meeting Lee to discuss problems, the Domestic Violence Service being quick to identify potential problems and all agencies persistence despite the difficult in working with Lee.
Authors made an eight-point action plan for all agencies including improved multi-agency working, refreshment of training for staff particularly addressing disability hate crime using Lee’s case as an example and an assessment of how safeguarding alerts are carried out and escalated.
Ewen Weir, director of people at Newcastle City Council, which heads up the directorate which cared for Lee all his life, said: “The public can be assured that we have learned some valuable lessons in this case and are making changes to tighten our procedures yet further.”