Former care worker Lauran Castle was found guilty of killing one-year-old Leiland-James Corkhill because he wouldn’t stop crying.
Leiland-James was a looked-after child in Cumbria, and had been placed for adoption with Lauran and he husband Scott Castle. Social services were aware that Castle had decided she didn’t love Leiland-James and had called him a spate of awful names, including “top t***” and “s*** bag”, while her husband had called him a d*** baby”, “fat s***” and “toss bag”.
In one text message exchange published by Manchester Evening News, Scott said, ” I think he’s a little too f***ed up for us to handle. Let’s just call it quits. I don’t want you to have a mental break down. Your more important to me than him.”
Lauran also admitted to hitting the baby during an earlier exchange.
Little Leiland-James died on January 7 due to what medical experts told the court was a degree of force which would have been “severe” and most likely a combination of shaking and hitting the child against a solid surface.
While social services knew there were issues and had been made aware of Lauran’s feelings towards the baby, a clear reluctance to engage in the exercise of a new placement meant that the local authority staff left Leiland-James with Lauran, despite having decided they wouldn’t be approving the adoption.
Abuse at the hands of foster carers and prospective adopters is not uncommon.
According to the latest government data, fostered children in England made 1,585 allegations of abuse against their foster carers from 2020 to 2021, while a further 1,015 complaints about suspected child abuse perpetrated by foster carers were made by “other sources” according to Ofsted’s “Fostering in England” release published in November. The sources were not identified in the release.
Some children like Leiland-James are too small to raise their voices, while others remain afraid to speak out. And nothing is mentioned by local authorities and adoption agencies about the very sophisticated level of care children inside the system need. It is not ‘basic’ parenting — which is hard enough at the best of times — or parenting for people who don’t have the ability or don’t want to dedicate their lives to learning how to care for a truly unique little person with a large set of needs.
Rest in peace lovely Leiland-James.
Researching Reform 
Yes, I read this in the news earlier today. One of the things that should have been flagged up long before was the fact they regularly smacked baby Leyland-James, which is totally against Social Services policy. No one should be smacking kids but to regularly smack a one year old who is suffering separation trauma (both from birth mum and devoted foster carers) is absolutely abysmal – poor child – he must have been desperately unhappy and traumatised and these so-called carers had no understanding of the needs of the baby boy placed in their care.
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Just a copy of my email sent to the “Bicester Advertiser” ref this matter …
[“I was reading the Bicester Advertiser’s article on Facebook ref :
“Woman convicted of murdering boy she wanted to adopt”
You will note that John Readman (Director for People) for the Council stated :
” Abuse of a child by adopters is almost unheard of and we are determined to do everything we can to prevent this happening again, here or anywhere else.”
This is untrue and last year two of us conducted a 2021 survey on UK (only) Adult Adoptees to see how many in fact were child abused INSIDE Adoption .. See the attached survey of 95 UK Adoptees the figure is over 40% .. Even taking account of some skewing that is high… It’s another area made socially invisible by the complicity of politicians and Services .. I even warned IICSA (Child Abuse Enquiry) about this sub section of population from 2015 onwards but they concentrated on other parts of the child abused populations and sub sets ..
Adoption is under-reported on and remains socially invisible apart from promoting it’s “positives” .. I could say more .. Let me know if you need to talk to me ..
Regards
Paul Brian Tovey (Retired / ex Mental Health Monitor) “]
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Yes, and the social workers were aware of the smacking. Just because there were no visible bruises they apparently had no concerns! Who smacks a one year old and regularly as well? The carers were flouting social services’ rules and policies and it was clear they couldn’t cope with Leyland-James’ emotional needs.
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The best possible Reform is for social workers, judges and fosters careers to made accountable for their decisions and actions, they need more guidelines and supervision to make sure that they do not make mistakes when putting children into the system.
Too many families are being investigated beyond the six months allowed, as a result too many families are being split up and children put at risk just because figures need to be met.
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I haven’t checked this point, but I wonder whether anyone has tried to reach out to the natural parents to hear their voices.
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The usual SS failures we have been hearing about for many years yet they still fail to prevent serious injury or death when they know there ere issues.
Arthur Labinjo Hughes is another classic example of rubbish child protection work. not to mention 5 yr old Jenson Spellman who was killed by his Social worker mother in Dec 2018.
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