Baby killed by his parents ‘should have been protected’, says review

CHILDREN’S services have apologised after a review found safeguarding practice was inadequate in the final weeks of the life of a baby murdered not long after being handed back to his parents.

The children’s agency involved in the decision to return Finley Boden to the couple said it was “profoundly sorry that together we were unable to prevent his death”.

Its apology was echoed by both the Derby and Derbyshire Safeguarding Children Partnership and Derbyshire County Council, with the latter recognising there had been “missed opportunities”. A review into the circumstances leading up to his murder said the 10-month-old “should have been one of the most protected children in the local authority area” but found “significant shortcomings” in plans for him to be reunited with his parents.

Shannon Marsden and Stephen Boden inflicted 130 injuries on their son before he fatally collapsed at his family home in Old Whittington, Chesterfield, on Christmas Day 2020.

He had been returned to their care on November 17 that year by a family court despite social services raising concerns over Boden and Marsden’s drug use and the state of the family home. After returning home, the child was subjected to a campaign of abuse and was found to have a multitude of injuries at the time of his death, as well as sepsis and pneumonia.

Marsden and Boden were handed life sentences with respective minimum terms of 27 and 29 years at Derby Crown Court in May.

A Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review into Finley’s death, published by the safeguarding children partnership yesterday, said while Finley’s parents were responsible for his death, “professional interventions should have protected him”.

The review, which has been anonymised, said: “In this instance, a child died as the result of abuse when he should have been one of the most protected children in the local authority area.”

It said the “most significant professional decision” was that he should live with his parents, and concluded that “the safeguarding environment in which that decision was made had been incrementally weakened by the decisions, actions, circumstances and events which preceded it”.

Most of what had been experienced by Finley in the final weeks of his life “was unknown to professionals working with the family at that time”, the report said.

But it added: “The review has found, nevertheless, that safeguarding practice during that time was inadequate.”

It noted there had been a six-week period where a social worker was off sick and that during that time no social work visits to Finley or his parents took place.

The review acknowledged that Covid 19 regulations and their consequences had “exacerbated” the couple’s inaccessibility to professionals, but added the local authority had accepted “more could have been done to ‘work’ the case and to formulate the final care plan” in spite of the “unique” pressures of the pandemic.