Child removal without parental support can raise risk to future babies – report
Better support for parents whose children are taken into care is urgently needed in a bid to prevent harm to any babies they have in the future, a report has said.
A national child safeguarding review, launched after the death of aristocrat Constance Marten’s baby Victoria Marten, said that if “destructive cycles of harm are to be interrupted”, focus must be on parents as well as their vulnerable baby or unborn infant.
Marten and her convicted rapist partner Mark Gordon were jailed in September for 14 years for killing their newborn baby while on the run.
The pair were in hiding when baby Victoria died in a tent on the South Downs in January 2023. The child’s decomposed remains were found in March that year by police officers searching allotments in Brighton.
The defendants had fled authorities to prevent baby Victoria being taken into care, as four other siblings had been before, their Old Bailey case heard.
A review, published on Thursday (February 11) by the national Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel, said the baby girl’s birth “was the last within her family of a rapid series of pregnancies, births and removals into care that by the time she was conceived had become a repeating pattern with devastating consequences”.
It said that, given the family history, professionals around them “needed to contemplate the prospect of Victoria being conceived and born well in advance, to have a better chance of engaging more productively with her parents”.
Panel chairman Sir David Holmes said while it might be “hard to hear and harder still to action”, a lesson from the case is that a focus must be kept on support for parents in cases of child removal “however hard to understand they may be”.
The review noted the couple’s “persistent reluctance to engage” with authorities, having moved five times during their five pregnancies between 2017 and 2023, “with each move coinciding with escalating safeguarding concerns”.
It also said no one agency or professional had specific responsibility for supporting the couple when their children were removed “or helping them process their likely sense of loss and grief” and that the “successive removal” of their children “may have reinforced their perception of harm caused by children’s social care, making the concealment of Victoria feel subjectively ‘rational’”.
During their sentencing, Judge Mark Lucraft told the defendants they had displayed “arrogance” and treated Victoria to “neglect of the most serious type”.
Sir David’s review acknowledged the “significant challenges” faced by safeguarding professionals dealing with troubled families, outlining that domestic abuse, her father’s rape conviction and parents unwilling to engage with authorities as they moved around the country were all factors in baby Victoria’s case.
But he said a “critical lesson” to learn from the death was that “keeping children safe by removing them with just cause from their parents only serves to protect those children”.
He added: “It does not address the root of the problem, and it does not prevent the same set of circumstances from happening again. Indeed, it may increase the risk of harm for the next child, not yet born, not yet even conceived.”
Some 5,360 under-ones were subject to child protection plans (CPPs) in England on March 31, 2025, according to official statistics published by the Department for Education in December.
Of these, 3,930 were babies under one year old and 1,430 were unborn infants.
Sir David said more than a third (36 per cent) of cases of serious harm or death of a child which were looked at by the panel involved babies who were not yet a year old.
The review said: “The absence of co-ordinated support following care proceedings left Constance Marten and Mark Gordon isolated and unsupported, increasing the risk to their children.”
The panel has recommended national guidance on safeguarding and child protection for babies, which it said must include content on vulnerable babies, concealed pregnancy and pre-birth planning for unborn infants when there are child protection risks.
It also said safeguarding partners should work with adult services to “develop, implement and resource effective parental engagement strategies” in an attempt to both lower the risk of more children being taken into care and to ensure consistency across the country; and ensure principles for local areas to follow where it is unclear which local authority should be responsible for a child when families move.
Sir David said: “Whereas the death of baby Victoria wasn’t predictable, her conception arguably was.”
The review also called on government to strengthen requirements for registered sex offenders to tell police if they or their partner was due to give birth.
If accepted, the change could see offenders who fail to notify police of a pregnancy in their relationship sent back to prison, the panel said.
Marten, now 38, and Gordon, now 51, were found guilty in July 2025 of baby Victoria’s manslaughter, child cruelty, concealing the birth of a child and perverting the course of justice following two trials spanning six months each.
Sir David said the review was clear that Victoria’s parents committed “awful crimes”, but added: “Maybe one of the ways that we can honour Victoria’s legacy is also thinking about how we make the safeguarding system better for vulnerable babies in the future.”
The Government is running a consultation, due to close in March, on the establishment of a Child Protection Authority which would, it has said previously, “absorb and build on the impressive work” of the current Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel.
