Constance Marten: Future babies at risk if parents not supported during child removal, report finds

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’s found – after a baby was found dead in Sussex.

A national child safeguarding review was launched after the Constance Marten's baby Victoria Marten was found in a bag for life in Brighton in 2023.

The 38-year-old had fled authorities with her boyfriend to prevent her baby taken into care.

Now, a report has 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 - with the aristocrat insisting she was "given ultimatums, rather than true assistance" by social services in the lead-up to her baby daughter's death.

The findings, published on Thursday, included Marten’s written answers to questions from safeguarding experts after her conviction at the Old Bailey last year.

'Dealings' with social services caused Marten's 'mistrust'

Marten and Gordon, who had five children together, four of whom were removed into care before Victoria's birth, were noted through their "persistent reluctance to engage" with authorities, having moved around the country between 2017 and 2023, "with each move coinciding with escalating safeguarding concerns".

But the 38-year-old told the review her "mistrust" of social services "developed" over time because of her "dealings with them".

Asked by the review how contact with child safeguarding agencies made her feel, Marten said:

"It felt like they were using the powers of the state coercively rather than constructively.

"It felt, in a way, that there was a flow chart which would ultimately result in the removal of my children, step by step.

"My mistrust of social services is not an innate feature of my personality, it developed due to my dealings with them."

The report 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".

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'".

"Critical lesson" to be learned

Sir David 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.

Panel recommends national safeguarding guidance

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.

It suggested having principles for local areas to follow where it is unclear which local authority should be responsible for a child when families move.

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.

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