Safeguarding review into malnourished girl nationally recognised
Ms McKay said: "That review has actually had national recognition and we have had a number of local authorities ask how we did that and what the processes were."We have had 200 participants in the training of that information with her parents and carers at the centre of that learning."Sophia was front and centre, her voice is very much in that review."
The review, which did not seek to assign blame for what happened to the teenager, was written in the first person as it was felt Sophia had not been "seen or heard for such a long time". In 2020, a GP concluded the youngster had "extensive mental health problems, a history of self harm and problems with eating".Sophia was previously admitted to hospital suffering from pancytopenia – a significantly reduced blood cell count. Malnutrition was identified as the cause, but she was not diagnosed with an eating disorder.
'Wish to be happy'
Sophia also had bone marrow failure and paediatricians were unsure she would survive.During her hospital stay in 2023, she told mental health practitioners that she did not feel "worthy" of food and "did not feel worthy of life". During the review, she said: "I do not think services or workers listened to me for them to really understand how I was feeling or what was happening at home or in my life. "I wanted someone to help me and to be there for me."If this was different, I think I might be happier, taller or I might like myself more now. "My biggest wish is to be happy."
At the time of writing the report, Sophia was described as "confident"."People that know me now say I am bubbly and confident - they regularly see me smiling and giggling," she said."I love shopping, make up, clothes, swimming, cycling and taking photos with my camera. I also enjoy being able to go to school."
The report identified 12 key points of learning, including a criticism of descriptions of Sophia as "complex, challenging or a problem" as this assigned blame.It also identified strengths and successes that could be made into best practice.These included praise for Sophia's school for maintaining contact with the family during the pandemic and for healthcare professionals who gave advice to her step-mum when she became unwell.The council's children's services were rated outstanding by Ofsted last year.
Follow BBC North East on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
28 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Thousands of Army soldiers may be suffering brain damage from blast of own weapons
Thousands of soldiers and veterans may be suffering from brain damage from firing heavy weapons, official studies have revealed. Defence chiefs have confirmed for the first time that machineguns and anti-tank weapons emit harmful blast waves which can cause traumatic injuries. Explosions create a wave of 'overpressure', a spike in the surrounding air pressure above normal atmospheric levels. The impulse can be so strong it penetrates the skull. Once inside the brain, the energy causes microscopic damage to blood vessels and neurons. Repeated exposure can overwhelm the brain's ability to heal itself, causing serious long-term neurological damage, according to researchers at the University of Birmingham. Symptoms of blast-related TBI overlap with those of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), making it difficult to diagnose. These may include: severe headaches, visual disturbances, sensitivity to noise and light, memory loss and a sense of personality change. Speaking to ITV, Lieutenant Colonel James Mitchell said: 'If we go back twenty years to the early Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns the perception was that we were seeing concussion and mild Traumatic Brain Injury predominantly from impact and exposure to substantial blast. 'Over especially the last five to ten years we are starting to appreciate the role of what we call 'low level blast', this is predominantly exposure of our service personnel to blast overpressure from our own weapon systems.' Lt Col Mitchell, a Royal Army Medical Service neurologist, added that while exact figures were not known, 'thousands' of serving personnel have been exposed to harmful blasts, with figures potentially even higher for veterans affected. Most at risk are those who have been repeatedly exposed to heavy weapons, including mortars, some shoulder-launched anti-tank weapons, 50-calibre rifles and machine guns, or explosive charges. The University of Birmingham is playing a key role in the mTBI Predict study in partnership with the Ministry of Defence. Neuroscientist Professor Lisa Hill said when the brain is damaged, it releases biomarkers, biological clues that can help scientists understand what and where the damage is happening. She said: 'If somebody gets injured, it changes the structure and function of the brain, but it also releases chemicals that you wouldn't normally see. 'So if we can measure things in blood or in their saliva, that can tell us how potentially bad their injury has been and what symptoms they might go on to get.' Professor Karen Mullinger, an expert in neuro-imaging at Nottingham University, is working to identify patterns of damage with sophisticated brain scanning technology called OPM MEG. Professor Mullinger also plans to study soldiers in real time, to see which activities are highest risk. She said: 'We can scan these soldiers before they go and do a training exercise and then immediately after, then we get a baseline which is specific to them. 'If the 'wire paths' have been damaged by blasts or whatever else it might be, then the function is going to change.' The information collected from these trials could shape policy, such as modifying the most damaging weapons or reducing blast exposure in training exercises. Last night, the MOD said: 'The health and wellbeing of our Armed Forces is critical and we provide specialist medical treatment for Traumatic Brain Injuries at the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre. 'We know blast exposure causes physical change or injury in the brain that is only now becoming detectable and recognised with recent advances in the field, and we know there are alleged long-term effects of this exposure, but causation has not yet been shown and is the subject of much ongoing research. 'Using the latest research and advanced technology, the UK and our international partners are actively working on advancing the diagnosis, management and rehabilitation of patients with Mild Traumatic Brain Injury. This includes over £4m in funding for the latest advanced research, which will help both military and civilian patients.'
The Guardian
28 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘We faced hunger before, but never like this': skeletal children fill hospital wards as starvation grips Gaza
Mohammed's skeletal arms stick out of a romper with a grinning emoji-face and the slogan 'smiley boy', which in a Gaza hospital reads as a cruel joke. He spends much of the day crying from hunger, or gnawing at his own emaciated fingers. At seven months old, he weighs barely 4kg (9lbs) and this is the second time he has been admitted for treatment. His face is gaunt, his limbs little more than bones covered in baggy skin and his ribs protrude painfully from his chest. 'My biggest fear now is losing my grandson to malnutrition,' said his grandmother Faiza Abdul Rahman, who herself is constantly dizzy from lack of food. The previous day the only thing she ate was a single piece of pitta bread, which cost 15 shekels (£3). 'His siblings also suffer from severe hunger. On some days, they go to bed without a single bite to eat.' Mohammed was born healthy but his mother was too malnourished to produce breast milk, and the family has only been able to get two cans of baby formula since. The ward at the Patient's Friends Benevolent Society hospital is crowded with other skeletal children, some doubled up on the 12 beds. There are only two functioning paediatric teams left in Gaza City, and up to 200 children turn up daily seeking treatment. Dr Musab Farwana spends his days trying, but often failing, to save them. Then he goes home to share meals that are too small with his own hungry sons and daughters. The whole family are losing weight fast, because his salary buys almost nothing, and he doesn't want to risk the deadly race for supplies handed out by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation after another medic, Dr Ramzi Hajaj, was killed trying to get food at one site. Gaza has never been hungrier, despite several warnings about impending famine over the course of nearly two years of war. Over just three days this week public health officials recorded 43 deaths from hunger; there had been 68 in total before that. Faiza Abdul Rahman who has stayed in Gaza City throughout the war, said even the time of most intense controls on food entering northern Gaza last year were not as bad. 'We faced hunger before, but never like this,' she said. 'This is the hardest phase we've ever endured.' Testimony from residents and doctors, and data from the Israeli government, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and the UN and humanitarian organisations shows food is running out. Empty shelves are reflected in soaring prices, with flour selling for more than 30 times the market rate at the start of the year. Even money or influential employers can no longer protect Palestinians. 'Humanitarian organisations are witnessing their own colleagues and partners waste away before their eyes,' more than 100 aid groups working in Gaza, including MSF, Save the Children and Oxfam warned in a joint statement this week. The journalists union AFP said on Monday that for the first time in the news agency's history they risk losing a colleague to starvation. On Wednesday the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said a 'large proportion' of Gaza's population was starving. 'I don't know what you would call it other than mass-starvation – and it's man-made.' For months Israel has choked off food shipments. The total amounts allowed in since the start of March are well below starvation rations for the 2.1 million population, and Palestinians are already weakened by the impact of prolonged food shortages and repeated displacement. 'For nearly two years, children here have suffered from famine. Even if some days they felt full, it's not just about being full, it's about receiving the nutrients the body needs. And those are completely absent,' said Farwana, the paediatrician. Those years of malnourishment make them more vulnerable to other diseases, and their low immunity is compounded by the severe shortages of basic medical supplies, which Israel has also blocked from entry. 'Often, I feel devastated because there's something so simple the child needs to survive, and we just can't provide it,' he said. Three severely malnourished patients died in intensive care this week, one of them a girl who would have probably survived if doctors had been able to give her intravenous potassium, normally a basic medication, and now impossible to get hold of in Gaza. 'We tried to give her oral alternatives, but due to her malnutrition and resulting complications, she had poor absorption.' 'These cases haunt me, they never leave my mind. This child could have gone back to her family and lived a normal life. But because one simple thing wasn't available she didn't survive.' Israel imposed a total siege on Gaza from 2 March. When the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, lifted it on 19 May he claimed the government was acting to prevent a 'starvation crisis', because some of the country's staunchest allies told him they would not tolerate images of famine. In fact the Israeli government simply shifted course to draw out the starvation crisis, letting in only minimal quantities of aid so that Gaza's descent towards famine progressed a bit more slowly. The Israeli government announced plans to channel all aid through a secretive US-backed organisation that runs four militarised distribution points. Hundreds of people have been killed trying to get food handed out at sites Palestinians describe as 'death traps', which have handed out supplies that meet only a fraction of Gaza's needs. By 22 July, GHF had been operating for 58 days but the food it had brought in would only have sustained the population of Gaza for less than a fortnight, even if it was distributed equally. On Tuesday Umm Youssef al-Khalidi was preparing to try her luck at a GHF distribution centre for the first time. She had avoided them for months because her youngest child is two and her oldest 13 and her husband is paralysed and confined to a wheelchair. 'We have been silencing our hunger with water,' she said. 'My fear for my family is greater than my fear for myself. I fear something bad will happen to me, and I'll leave them without anyone to care for them.' But her family went without food for four days last week, and when they broke the fast, eight of them had to share a bag of rice and two potatoes given to them by a passing stranger. The children were excellent students before the war, who always won scholarships. Now they spend their days sitting on the edge of the street under a bombed mosque in al-Wehda neighbourhood in Gaza City, where the girls try to sell bracelets rather than just begging. Their is little demand for cheap jewellery in Gaza today, and although sometimes a passerby takes pity on the gang of skinny kids with dirty faces and tattered clothes, soaring prices means it buys little food. 'My children have become skeletal, skin and bone,' Khalidi said. 'Even the slightest effort makes them dizzy. They sit down again, asking for food, and I have nothing to give. I can't lie and say I'll bring them something when I know I won't be able to.' So she had decided that in the grim calculus of risks for her family, the hope of getting a little food finally outweighed the risk of losing the adult who held their lives together. Her husband's phone had been stolen earlier in the war, so they would have no way to communicate over the long hours that she would spend trekking to the GHF site, then racing to try to get food, and walking back. The family would just have to wait and hope. 'I have no one else to send,' she said. 'It's painful to watch them suffer, and their health gets worse every day they go without food.'
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
NHS consultant spoke to trans row witness despite warnings
An NHS consultant has admitted that she spoke to a potential witness despite being warned not to do so during an investigation into an altercation between a transgender doctor and a nurse.A healthcare assistant was alleged to have witnessed a separate incident involving nurse Sandie Peggie and Dr Beth Upton, days before they were involved in an encounter in a changing room at the Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy on Christmas Eve questioning from Ms Peggie's lawyer at a tribunal, Dr Kate Searle admitted that talking to the witness had been a "flagrant breach" of previous warnings not to discuss the she denied claims that she "left confidentiality in ruins" with her actions. Ms Peggie was suspended from work with NHS Fife after she told Dr Upton - a trans woman - not to be in the women's changing rooms. Dr Searle, who was Dr Upton's line manager, became involved with the case on 29 December and helped file a report on the NHS's datex complaints this period Dr Upton also accused Ms Peggie of walking out on treating a patient earlier in December due to the junior doctor's Searle later spoke to a healthcare assistant who was alleged to have witnessed this incident. However, the woman could not remember details of a conversation between Ms Peggie and Dr Upton. Dr Searle said she could not recall whether she had this conversation before or after Angela Glancy - a senior charge nurse involved in the investigation - had spoken to the Peggie's lawyer Naomi Cunningham said if Dr Searle had spoken to the witness before investigators it would be "grossly improper" added: "What possible business did you have making contact with the witness, who was a witness to a live investigation or pending employment tribunal proceedings?"Dr Searle replied "no business".The consultant said she "probably" spoke to the healthcare assistant after Dr Glancy had done so, but could not be sure as "times have blurred into one" during the later admitted that speaking to the witness was a "flagrant breach" of previous warnings not to discuss the case. Dr Searle became emotional after Ms Cunningham named the healthcare worker, saying that the person involved was desperate to avoid any media had to leave the stand at that point, which Ms Cunningham later dubbed "an outburst". The lawyer suggested the emotion was not to do with any concern for the healthcare assistant but out of "a desire to protect yourself."Dr Searle denied this, and NHS Fife's lawyer Jane Russell said Ms Cunningham's questions on the matter "left a little to be desired". Timeline of the Sandie Peggie tribunal Giving evidence for a second day, Dr Searle was again quizzed regarding emails exchanged between senior staff in the aftermath of the Christmas Eve Cunningham focused on one message said to mention avoiding "foot in mouth syndrome" and that not all messages had been provided to the added Dr Searle's search for emails related to the case had either been "surprisingly incompetent or deliberately withholding" the Searle said she rejected the latter Cunningham accused Dr Searle of "turning up the emotional heat" with how she reported the incident in the replied that she had reported the incident as she saw it, with a junior doctor upset about something that had happened at Searle had told the tribunal on Tuesday she considered reporting the matter to Police Scotland as it could be considered a hate Cunningham asked Dr Searle if she would have recognised Dr Upton as trans if she had not been told, and claimed the junior doctor was "obviously male".The lawyer added that the Christmas Eve incident could have been resolved by Dr Upton leaving the changing room, rather than telling Ms Peggie to speak to management about Searle said she disagreed this would have been a suitable way to end the tribunal continues.
