A housing association has been told to improve its record-keeping and staff training about domestic violence, following the murder of a 17-year-old girl by her former partner.
Jayden Parkinson’s body was discovered in a disturbed grave in Didcot in December 2013, after she went missing from a Bournemouth Churches Housing Association (BCHA) supported housing scheme two weeks earlier.
A serious case review commissioned by South and Vale Community Safety Partnership and Oxfordshire Safeguarding Children Board (OSCB) into her death last week reported “both some important strengths but also some weaknesses” in the service BCHA provided.
Inside housing have rported this, this is an extert from their report:
“Ms Parkinson was given a place at the BCHA scht:eme in November 2013. The review emphasised that social services provided BCHA with an “out of date” and “inadequate” risk assessment which meant staff were not aware of the scale of the risk posed by her former partner Ben Blakeley, of Reading.
The review found “in the comparatively short time” Ms Parkinson lived at BCHA she “built up good relationships with staff and made considerable disclosures to them”.
However, it found staff did not have the necessary expertise or training in domestic violence to fully understand the risk.
Ms Parkinson left the scheme to meet Mr Blakeley in December 2013, after discovering she was pregnant with his child.
Staff tried to discourage her from going, but were unable to and were reassured that she planned to meet him in a public place.
Rather than notify the police immediately, staff waited until she did not return that night to report her missing. She was strangled by Mr Blakeley that evening.”