A mother has been convicted of killing her seven-year-old son by leaving him to suffer an asthmatic attack alone in a garden.

Laura Heath, 39 was said to have fallen asleep after smoking heroin at a house in Birmingham, where she was accompanied by little Hakeem Hussain on a winter’s evening in 2017.

Hakeem’s body was found ‘near-freezing’ in the garden and did not have his inhalers on him.

His mum was found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter at Coventry Crown Court on Friday.

Prosecutors had described years of neglect suffered by the boy, including exposure to heroin and crack cocaine at an early age.

The court heard drugs were Heath’s ‘first priority in life’ and that she would turn her son’s inhalers into makeshift crack pipes using foil attached with a hairband.

He was forced to sleep on sofas as they flitted between ‘squalid’ homes, often turning up to school smelling of cigarette smoke and urine, jurors were told.

Photos of two houses where the pair were known to stay showed filthy rooms strewn with litter and unwashed clothes.

Heath had admitted four counts of child cruelty before trial, including ‘wilfully ill-treating’ Hakeem by exposing him to Class A substances and failing to provide proper medical supervision.

At the trial, it emerged that social services were warned that the boy was facing fatal levels of neglect.

A school nurse told a child protection conference ‘he could die at the weekend’ just two days before his body was found.

Heath had stopped engaging with social workers and school staff that year and began resorting to sex work to fund her drug habit, the court heard.

The head of Birmingham Childrens’s Trust, which took over the city’s child social services in 2018, said there were ‘clear missed opportunities’ in the handling of the case.

A full review of all contact between local authorities and Heath and Hakeem before his death will be published within weeks.

Heath is due to be sentenced next Thursday.

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