A SOCIAL worker was last night found to have failed a tragic Huddersfield toddler.

Judyth Kenworthy failed to act after being told two-year-old Sanam Navsarka had been locked in a cupboard shortly before she was murdered at her Deighton home, a disciplinary panel ruled.

And the Kirklees Council social worker admitted she was “too busy” to act on claims the youngster was being injured.

Mrs Kenworthy had denied having been warned about the cupboard incident before Sanam died in the wake of appalling abuse.

But a General Social Care Council committee in London said the allegation against her had been proved, a spokeswoman said.

Mrs Kenworthy admitted she had failed to pass on warnings that the two-year-old had a bruise on her head however, saying she was “extremely busy” at the time.

She acknowledged that she made a mistake in not acting on concerns about Sanam, of Riddings Road, who died on May 8, 2008, after suffering more than 100 injuries.

In a document outlining the reasons for its decision, the panel said: “The committee was of the view that the information regarding the bump on child A’s (Sanam’s) forehead was serious but made far worse by the report of the child being locked in a cupboard.

“The committee were of the view that the registrant was aware of this and that is why she has sought to distance herself from blame.”

Mrs Kenworthy may have failed to mention to police that she had been told about the cupboard incident “because she recognised how important this information was”, the committee said.

Giving evidence herself to the panel, Mrs Kenworthy sought to explain why she had not passed on information about the bruise.

“The only thing I can say is, I was extremely busy,” she said.

“I was trying to get to somewhere else, to go to an important meeting, and it was just one of those situations where it took over and that just didn’t register as being vitally important and that was the mistake I made.”

She added that she had never worked with children before.

Sanam’s mother’s partner, Subhan Anwar, was jailed for a minimum of 23 years for her murder, while her mother, Zahbeena Navsarka, was jailed for nine years for manslaughter.

Mrs Kenworthy, a family placement officer at Kirklees Council, was warned about the child on May 1, 2008, by Jacqueline Peel, who ran a home for vulnerable people.

She told the hearing: “I made a mistake. A lot of it was around the person giving me the information, the time scale, the fact she had that information for the whole week (and) done nothing with it.”

She said yesterday she had also believed the information was “tittle-tattle”.

Mrs Peel was alerted to the toddler’s injury when the girl’s aunt brought her to stay at the home and told investigators the injury was discussed with Mrs Kenworthy at the end of a meeting about a different resident.

Mrs Kenworthy agreed that, as a result of her actions, no measures were taken to safeguard Sanam and admitted withholding information when she gave a statement to police.

The committee is expected to decide today whether her actions amounted to misconduct.

The trial of Navsarka and Anwar at Bradford Crown Court in 2009 heard two-year-old Sanam, who had fractures to all four limbs, died after fatty deposits from her broken thigh bones entered her bloodstream.

Her hand prints and blood stains were found inside cupboards where she had been put as a punishment.

A metal pole was used to shatter Sanam’s leg and she was bruised and battered repeatedly in the four weeks before her death.