Mazeedat Adeoye: Girl, 2, left to drown in a garden bin after council’s care failings

A girl of two drowned in a garden bin after a council failed to find her adequate care, an inquest heard.

Balikis Adeoye, 37, said her daughter Mazeedat had been staying with people she “didn’t know or trust well enough” at the time of her death after Newham Council refused to help.

She said she had consistently asked social services to find a short-term foster placement for her daughter when she stayed with her three-month-old son in hospital, while he had surgery.

An inquest heard social workers simply advised Ms Adeoye to find support from the community or friends.

So when she went into hospital on January 25 2022, she had to leave Mazeedat with an acquaintance.

Four days later she went missing.

After a search at the family home in Dagenham, east London, the girl was found in a bin containing 3.5 inches of water.

She was pronounced dead just over two hours after her disappearance.

A post-mortem examination found her cause of death was drowning.

The inquest at East London Coroner’s Court heard that Ms Adeoye moved to the UK from Nigeria in March 2021.

In September her visitor visa had expired, by which time she had separated from her UK partner.

When her son, who is British, was diagnosed with a hole in the heart the mother went to the council about the foster placement.

As a visa overstayer she had no recourse to public funds to help with living costs, but the council had a duty to provide support – although this never happened.

Ms Adeoye said: “At the time she died, Mazeedat was staying with people I didn’t know or trust well enough. However, faced with the alternative of leaving my other child, a three-month-old baby alone in hospital to recover from heart surgery, this was no choice at all.”

Coroner Graeme Irvine concluded Mazeedat died due to inadequate supervision in the garden, and that combined failures by the council and those caring for Mazeedat constituted a “gross failure”.

He recorded a narrative conclusion, and said if a placement had been arranged her death would probably have been avoided.

The coroner also found a “culture of hostility” towards families existed in the council’s No Recourse to Public Funds team, who treated Ms Adeoye in a “dehumanising” way.

Mr Irvine said he would issue a prevention of future deaths report calling on the council to set out what measures it will take to improve services.

Newham Council said: “We will very carefully consider the inquest findings.”