Death of baby Rio 'avoidable'

The death of a 14-month-old baby boy, killed when he overdosed on his crack addict mother's drugs was “clearly avoidable”, a review concluded yesterday.

Rio Ross died in Bristol on July 21 last year while in the care of his mother, prostitute Sabrina Ross, with “morphine and methadone intoxication” recorded as the cause of death, the review said.

Ross pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to five years in prison at Bristol Crown Court last month.

The court heard that on the evening the child died, Ross, 30, left the house three times to buy drugs and in the morning discovered his lifeless body still clutching his Winnie the Pooh toy.

Rio, who already had heroin in his system, is thought to have drunk methadone as his mother slept and died from the effects of both drugs.

Bristol Safeguarding Children Board opened a serious case review into Rio's death after the trial concluded, and published its findings yesterday.

It recommended improved working practices between the police, child protection, health and social services to minimise the chances of such an incident happening again.

In the May prior to Rio's death, police had discovered him with his mother in a house where a drug raid was carried out, but did not refer it to the child abuse investigation team, the report said, in what was a “missed opportunity to link up increasing concerns”.

Ross called an ambulance after discovering Rio dead and admitted to having left the house three times during the evening leaving her son in the care of a friend, who she took drugs with.

Rio was born with an addiction to methadone in May 2006 and was kept in hospital for three weeks to be treated for withdrawal from the substance. The services who were monitoring Ross believed she was doing well and, while she was still in contact with social services and drug services, they did not believe Rio was at risk.

Her drug use was said to have become more “chaotic” as a result of her partner's cancer and death. She reported using heroin and crack cocaine on top of her methadone prescription twice a week, just days before her baby died.

The report was written by Alison Comely, head of community safety and drugs strategy at Safer Bristol, who spoke to people involved in monitoring Ross and Rio. She attempted to speak to Ross, but meetings were declined.

In her conclusions, she said: “There are various points in this case, particularly where it recognised that (Ross) was relapsing, where greater multi-agency working may have pulled children's social care in sooner, or kept them involved for a longer period.”

Ian McDowell, chairman of the Bristol Safeguarding Children Board, said: “The case has highlighted the need to bring involvement together in a more co-ordinated way. There were a lot of examples of good practice but opportunities for enhanced support work were not picked up and we need to strengthen these arrangements.

“There is no evidence that people had information to show that the baby was at risk of harm.”

The review said Rio's death was “clearly avoidable”.

But it added: “The information considered by the panel does not indicate that any agency could have reasonably known that he was at risk of methadone ingestion, and at this point it is still unclear as to how he came to ingest it. There is no suggestion in this report that there was any failure in the inter-agency child protection system contributing to the death of (Rio).”