'Missed opportunities' by care agencies in death of tragic Poppy Widdison

Care agencies have been accused of missing opportunities to protect a four-year-old girl, who died after her mother used drugs to sedate her.

Tragic Poppy Widdison was found to have been fed heroin, methodone and ketamine by her mother, Michala Pyke, in the months before her death in 2013.

A judge found Pyke, 38, had fed Poppy sedatives to “subdue and sedate her”, allowing Pyke and boyfriend John Rytting, 40, to indulge their own “squalid passion” as they plunged the youngster into “a mire of drugs and utter degradation”.

The couple were jailed for 13 years at Hull Crown Court on Thursday for child cruelty and drugs offences, but prosecutors did not charge the pair with any offences relating directly to Poppy’s death.

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A serious case review which examined the family’s involvement with a range of agencies concluded: “This review has enabled multi-agency professionals to reflect on how [Pyke] managed to mislead professionals with apparent ease.

“The review has also shown more disturbingly, however, that despite the significant history known to various agencies, no single practitioner or service knew what life was like for [Poppy] or the extent to which she was exposed to risk and harm on a daily basis.”

It identified “a number of missed opportunities to better protect [Poppy]” before she was born and in the period after.

The review described how social services were involved with Poppy through a Child in Need Plan for 13 months following her birth, becoming involved again when the little girl was three.

It said there were two referrals to children’s social care between these times – one was labelled a serious domestic abuse incident when Poppy’s father waved a chainsaw around in front of Pyke and their daughter.

Another was when a family member reported concerns that [Pyke] “was smoking cannabis, was lying in bed whilst [Poppy] was left alone and was using hairspray and perfume on [Poppy]”.

The review said the social worker was told by a drugs intervention project that [Pyke] was doing well in a recovery programme and they were not concerned.

It said: “A decision for no further action was made based on ‘no further evidence to substantiate the allegations’.”

It added: “The review found that practitioners adopted a mind-set of wanting evidence in support of allegations before acting rather than searching for evidence to refute the allegations before dismissing their validity.”

Poppy died in June 2013 after suffering a cardiac arrest at Rytting’s Grimsby home, where prescription and controlled drugs were “left lying around”.

A post-mortem examination could not establish a cause of death but toxicology tests carried out on her blood and hair found various drugs, and showed the young girl had been exposed to and had ingested significant amounts of heroin and methadone for a period of between two and six months before her death.

Judge Jeremy Richardson QC said on Thursday Pyke was “utterly unfit to be a mother” and saw her daughter as an “inconvenience” in her relationship with Rytting.

The judge said Poppy was born a heroin addict and suggested Pyke even named her in reference to the drug. He said the family “existed in the swamp of drug addiction and drug peddling”.