HEALTH workers have been told to do better by a report into the manslaughter of an 11-week old baby by his father.

Jordan Saxton was jailed for nine years last October for shaking his baby son Jayden to death in a fit of frustration at the baby's mother's home in Faringdon.

A Serious Case Review published today has made a string of recommendations for how things should be done differently in future.

Social workers should have considered an accumulation of abuse reports in the family home over a nine-year period, police did not always pass on abuse reports to social services and overworked call handlers at South Central Ambulance Service did not tell police about the death soon enough, it concluded.

Jane Wonnacott, who carried out the review for Oxfordshire Safeguarding Children Board, concluded that although there was "nothing to suggest that any professional could have predicted that the father would kill his baby son", there were areas of practice that could be improved.

The board's interim chairman Paul Burnett is currently leading five other Serious Case Reviews into deaths or serious harm to children, and said this report was unusual in not finding blame in any health authorities.

He said the most "critical" lesson for Oxfordshire was that social and health workers must have a wider overview of children's families, especially if there is a history of abuse.

He said: "It is not enough to just have information about the child during a mother's pregnancy and after birth.

"If you restrict yourself to that you may miss things that could be relevant – it's not uncommon that people who have been in abusive relationship end up in more.

"The professionals [in this case] could have had more information of an historic nature which may have given them a fuller picture for risk assessment."

The report found the baby's mother Tracy Ray had been known to police from 2005 mainly due to incidents of domestic abuse.

Ms Wonnacott said there were 18 recorded incidents from more than one partner, many of which took place after the birth of her first child, Jayden's half sister.

But in some cases Thames Valley Police did not inform children's social care that it had been called to a domestic abuse incident at the house where a baby was living.

She said: "A better use of chronologies, rather than cutting and pasting information from police notifications (which were often difficult to understand due to the use of jargon) would have helped in identifying patterns that needed further assessment."

South Central Ambulance Service and Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust have already implemented all of the recommendations made by the report.

That includes health visitors reviewing information about previous siblings when there are known vulnerabilities such as domestic abuse.

An NSPCC spokesman said: "There is no excuse for a parent to inflict such appalling injuries on a defenceless baby no matter what pressure they might be experiencing.

"Just a moment’s loss of control can result in a tragedy like this.

"We would urge any parent who is feeling stressed or is concerned about a child to call our helpline – 0808 800 5000 – without hesitation, as it could save a life."