Bungling social services allowed Munchausen's mother to abuse her own children for years

She fed the youngest one poison and may have tried to smother the child who was taken to hospital with ' breathing difficulties'.

The mother had convictions for trying to kidnap a baby from a hospital and for attempting to smother her eldest child years earlier, after which he and another child were taken away for adoption.

Social services did not 'sufficiently acknowledge' a mother who abused her children (file picture)

She later had three more children and was given free rein to bring them up unchecked.

A damning official report yesterday exposed how social services ignored the alarm bells and did not ' sufficiently acknowledge' the mother's shocking history.

She has Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy, in which sufferers harm others to gain attention for themselves.

The report by the Bristol Safeguarding Children Board said that child protection procedures were ignored and no safeguards were in place to prevent harm coming to the youngsters.

It comes a day after the mother of murdered Victoria Climbie said lessons had not been learned from her daughter's death in 2000 from abuse that was ignored by social services.

The latest appalling abuse case to come to light took place over more than a decade.

The first warning sign came in 1988 when the woman, who lived in the Bristol area but has not been named to protect the children's identities, was 17.

She was sentenced to 12 months' probation for trying to steal a baby from a hospital.

Two years later, she was diagnosed with Munchausen's after poisoning her eldest child with opiates  -  a narcotic found in heroin  -  and attempting to smother him when he was seven months.

Charged with abuse, she was given a three-year probation order and her two children were taken away.

Of her next three children, by another man, the first two were initially given to the father's parents to look after before being allowed back despite strong opposition from the grandparents.

When the fifth child was born, in 2002, social workers 'considered' convening a child protection conference, but it never happened.

Then history starting repeating itself. The mother began taking her youngest child to the GP and hospital, often with breathing difficulties.

The report said: 'This behaviour was remarkably similar to the behaviour that had led to the removal of the mother's eldest child.'

Then it emerged she had been poisoning the child too. In August 2004, opiates were discovered in the youngster, the same condition suffered by the eldest child a decade earlier.

The other two were emotionally abused.

All three were removed from the parents. The mother, now 37, was convicted of cruelty to the children and the father convicted of covering up for her.

But it had taken more than ten years for social workers to finally wake up to the horrific risks the mother posed.

The report concluded: 'The seriousness of the earlier concerns and the mother's personality issues and criminal convictions were not sufficiently acknowledged in the riskassessment of subsequent children.'

Ian McDowall, chairman of the Bristol Safeguarding Children Board, said the report's recommendations had all been implemented.