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Ashley Chadburn

Social services criticised over boy's drug death

Telegraph.co.uk By Paul Stokes May 10, 2003

DSS team criticised over boy's drug death

Social workers have been criticised for failing to prevent the death of a two-year-old boy who drank his heroin addict mother's substitute drug.

Ashley Chadburn sipped from a bottle of methadone as Rachel Hipkiss smoked heroin in her home in December 2001. When he fell ill, she left him in the care of a 16-year-old addict and went Christmas shopping.

Hipkiss, 23, was jailed for six years after admitting to manslaughter at Sheffield Crown Court last year. An independent report into the case has accused social services of being "too tolerant of such serious drugs misuse".

In his report Roger Thompson, a former director of the NSPCC, makes 26 recommendations aimed at preventing a repeat. "There was not, in my view, a full and proper assessment of the mother's parenting capacity," he said.

The chairman of the Area Child Protection Committee, which commissioned the report, said that the committee had already implemented half of the recommendations.

An inquiry into the death of a two-year-old boy who swallowed a bottle of his mother's methadone found a "tolerance of drug misuse" among social services staff.

But the independent report concluded the tragic death of Ashley Chadburn, from Frechville, Sheffield, could not have been avoided.

The toddler died in December 2001 after finding an open bottle of the heroin substitute methadone.

Rachael Hipkiss, a heroin addict, is currently serving a six-year jail sentence for involuntary manslaughter. BBC News On-line