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Teegan Rose Hayes was born healthy in Devonport, Tasmania, in October 2011. Twenty-four days later, she died. The state's child protection service did not know she existed until she was in intensive care, even though it had been receiving reports about her family since 1997.

Fifteen notifications were made before she was born. Thirteen were closed at the first stage. In 2018, Coroner Olivia McTaggart found that Teegan's death was accidental, caused by suffocation while she slept in her mother's arms. She also found that it could have been prevented if child protection had properly assessed and acted on the warnings.

This episode follows the notifications one by one, from a paediatrician's concern about a toddler to an anonymous call three months before Teegan's birth. It looks at cumulative harm, at what happened to the file after her death, and at the findings of the service's own review.

For professionals, the episode draws out six practice strands: closing notifications at the front door, cumulative harm, reliance on self-report, assessing parents with intellectual disability, the unborn baby, and what a service does after a child dies. It ends with six reflective questions.

This episode discusses the death of an infant. Details are kept non-graphic. There was no inquest, so the episode draws on the coroner's written finding and news reports, and it says where information could not be found.

Hosted by a social worker with more than fourteen years of industry experience.

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Katelynn Sampson: (Case File)

In the early hours of 3 August 2008, a woman in a Parkdale apartment building in Toronto called 911 and said her daughter had choked on bread. Paramedics found seven-year-old Katelynn Sampson dead, with about seventy injuries on her body. Two months earlier, a judge had signed an order making the woman on the phone Katelynn's permanent legal guardian.

This is the case file on Katelynn Sampson. I trace how her mother, struggling with addiction, placed her with a friend to avoid losing her to the system. I cover how a guardianship order was granted without the court hearing about the guardians' criminal history or their earlier child removals. I also cover how a school principal's call about burns and bruises fell into the gap between two overlapping agencies, and how nobody ever spoke to Katelynn herself. I follow the 2012 guilty pleas of Donna Irving and Warren Johnson to second-degree murder, and the 2015–16 coroner's inquest. It ended on what would have been her fifteenth birthday with a verdict of homicide and 173 recommendations. I say plainly what I couldn't find, including how many of those recommendations were carried out.

I also draw on more than fourteen years of social work practice to look at six areas, with a focus on the child's voice. The episode ends with questions for professionals.

Chapters (approximate):

• Cold open: the 911 call
• Bernice Sampson and the decision to ask a friend
• Donna Irving and Warren Johnson: what the records held
• Four agencies, one family
• The school: absences, bruises and the calls
• The guardianship hearings
• The last three months
• The pleas and sentences
• The inquest and the 173 recommendations
• Six strands for professionals
• Questions to take back to your practice

Content note: The episode discusses the abuse and death of a child. The script deliberately leaves out some details from the court record. discretion advised

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Christian Choate: Nobody's Gonna Miss Him Anyhow

In the first days of April 2009, a thirteen-year-old boy died in a dog cage in a trailer in Gary, Indiana. He weighed less than fifty pounds. Within a week, his father and stepmother had buried him in concrete behind the trailer park and driven the rest of the family to Kentucky. When anyone asked where Christian Choate was, they said he had run away. For two years, nobody filed a report.

This is the case file on Christian Choate. He was found because his sister, who had been forced to help hide his body, finally told their mother where it was. I follow the Indiana Department of Child Services' contact with the family, including:

• eight investigated allegations;
• a 2005 custody order that gave Christian to a father with a felony record and a substantiated abuse finding;
• complaints in 2007 and 2008 that focused on the household and not on each child;
• a school that wrote about Christian's absences, after which his father withdrew him to homeschool him;
• a doctor who was told Christian was being locked up at night and didn't report it.

I also cover the Times of Northwest Indiana's finding that at least thirteen people may have known, DCS's statement that it did everything it legally could, the former child protective chief who said "We failed him," and the 2012–13 pleas and sentences. Riley Choate received eighty years and Kimberly Kubina thirty-five. I say plainly what I couldn't find, including the DCS and Ombudsman Bureau reviews, which were never released, and any discipline for anyone outside the family.

I also draw on more than fourteen years of social work practice to look at six areas, from what an investigation looks at to what "everything it legally could" is worth. The episode ends with questions for professionals.

Chapters (approximate):

• Cold open: "He ran away"
• Christian's early life and the 2005 custody order
• The household and its history
• DCS contacts in 2007 and 2008
• The school, the homeschool decision and the doctor
• Christian's last years and Christina's story
• The death and the two years of silence
• Discovery and the thirteen people who may have known
• DCS's response
• The courts: pleas, sentences and appeal
• Six strands for professionals
• What I could not find
• Questions to take back to your practice

Content note: The episode discusses the abuse and death of a child, including confinement in a cage, and systemic failures in child protection.