A Black Country toddler tortured by a couple employed to care for him was not protected despite his killers being known to child protection agencies, a report has found.

Ryan Lovell-Hancox died from a brain injury he received at the Bilston home of Christopher Taylor and Kayley Boleyn in December 2008.

Ryan's mother, Amy Hancox, who knew nothing of the abuse, Taylor and Boleyn were all "known" to statutory authorities, a serious case review by Wolverhampton's Safeguarding Children Board found.

Miss Hancox paid Boleyn and her boyfriend Taylor £40 a week to look after her three-year-old son after realising she could not cope with the strains of motherhood.

The 21-year-old suffered from mental health problems and was trying to decorate her flat.

She thought Boleyn would provide her young son with the love and attention he needed.

They were cousins, had grown up together and Miss Hancox had no reason not to trust the 19-year-old when she left Ryan at the flat she shared with Taylor, 25, in Bilston, in November 2008.

A month later the child was in a coma in hospital, having suffered a massive brain haemorrhage at the ground floor flat in Slim Avenue and died on Christmas Eve.

Boleyn and Taylor, who were both addicted to cannabis and alcohol, were jailed for life for Ryan's murder at Wolverhampton Crown Court in July last year.

The court heard how Ryan was forced to live in squalor during the month spent with Boleyn and Taylor, and was repeatedly beaten about the face, back and buttocks, his body receiving more than 70 injuries by the time he died.