The body of a woman in her early fifties was discovered by police as she was pushed around in a wheelchair by her mother, reports Sebastian Mann, Local Democracy Reporter
A safeguarding partnership in Waltham Forest has vowed to improve after a shocking incident where a mother was found pushing her dead daughter in a wheelchair.
Waltham Forest Safeguarding Adults Board (SAB) was told to reassess how it handles some cases in light of the tragic incident following a review.
The body is made up of officers from Waltham Forest Council, NHS North East London and the Metropolitan Police.
In November 2023, the decomposing body of a woman in her early fifties, identified by the pseudonym Jodie, was discovered by police.
Jodie’s mother – ‘Janet,’ in her seventies – had been pushing the body in a wheelchair by 17&Central, in Selborne Road, when she was stopped by officers. They lifted the red coat draped over her body to find a “heavily decomposed” corpse.
Her mother had kept Jodie’s corpse in their shared Leyton flat for more than a year after she died, an inquest was told in February. Before the incident, neighbours had been complaining to the housing association for months about “horrendous smells” and a fly infestation.
Though it is a crime to not report a death, the mother – who was found to be suffering from a brain tumour – was not charged by police. In a statement read out at the inquest, she said she “couldn’t bear to part with [Jodie]”.
The pair had first become known to the council in 2013, when they were evicted from their home. In January 2014, a council officer identified safeguarding concerns with both Jodie and Janet but they were not investigated “rigorously” enough, an independent reviewer from Strategic Partnerships Board (SPB) said.
In a review published last October, the SAB was ordered to “urgently commission” a series of multi-agency audits and update and clarify its referral and escalation processes.
The SPB said it was important to avoid just one partner understanding a case and to ensure “direct line of sight on the front door”.
The SAB “accepts the reviewer’s findings and agrees the changes needed to further improve practice,” it said in a response last week.
It carried out several reviews through November and December, and is expected to “provide assurances” over its new approaches in June.
The SPB added officers handled the situation “very well”. They wrote: “They had to think and act outside of normal parameters. They had no procedures, training or tools to equip them to respond. They acted on their human instinct.
“While this case is bizarre and extremely rare and hopefully will not happen again, it shows the need to provide support to individuals in these situations.”
The SAB was told to also consider responses to “bizarre, shocking and urgent circumstances” and “what kind of leadership is required at moments such as these”.
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