Alder Hey Children's NHS Foundation Trust has accepted "full responsibility" for the death of Eleanor Aldred-Owen, a one-year-old girl who died after skull surgery at the Liverpool hospital in October 2023, the North Wales Daily Post has reported.
The newspaper said an internal review by the trust had identified 24 failures in her care. The reports do not set out what each of the 24 failures was, and the trust has not published the review.
The admission comes almost two years after a coroner found that neglect contributed to Eleanor's death. At the time the trust said it accepted the findings; the new reports go further, placing responsibility for her death squarely with the hospital.
Eleanor, from Mold in Flintshire, was born with bicoronal craniosynostosis, a condition in which the bones of the skull fuse too early. She was otherwise well, with no associated problems or genetic abnormalities, according to a Prevention of Future Deaths report issued by Helen Rimmer, assistant coroner for Liverpool and Wirral.
The operation itself passed without incident, the coroner wrote, "except that Eleanor's tracheal tube dislodged towards the end of the procedure and she required reintubating". She "returned to the ward following her surgery and was seemingly stable apart from being tachycardic", meaning her heart rate was raised.
She was moved to paediatric intensive care and over the following two days became gradually unstable. A CT scan of her head showed catastrophic brain damage caused by lack of oxygen. "Life sustaining measures were then withdrawn and Eleanor sadly died on 2nd October 2023," the report says.
Her parents, Charles and Rachel Aldred-Owen, told the Daily Post that she had developed a pneumothorax, or collapsed lung, after the operation. They said she suffered a cardiac arrest before the pneumothorax was identified and treated, and a brain scan then showed an unsurvivable injury. "We watched her struggle to breathe," they said.
At the inquest in December 2024 the couple said they had raised concerns about Eleanor's breathing and had filmed a video to show staff, the Daily Post reported.
The coroner opened her investigation on 11 October 2023, nine days after Eleanor's death, and the inquest concluded on 18 December 2024. The Daily Post reported the conclusion as one of gross neglect. The coroner's Prevention of Future Deaths report, which sets out concerns that must be answered by the bodies it is sent to, went to NHS England among others.
An Alder Hey spokesperson said at the time: "Following the conclusion today of the inquest into the tragic death of Eleanor Aldred-Owen, the Trust fully accepts the coroner's findings."
The trust has since issued a public statement saying it has taken full responsibility, the Daily Post reported, but the document in which the admission was made has not been released. Alder Hey has been approached for comment on the review, the 24 failures and what has changed at the hospital since Eleanor's death.
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