A nurse who spent her working life inside the same NHS trust took her own daughter to its hospital, asked out loud whether it could be meningitis, and was told the problem was tonsillitis.
A court has approved a settlement between Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust and the parents of Lila Marsland, the five-year-old Hyde girl who died of pneumococcal meningitis hours after she was discharged from Tameside Hospital, a trust spokesperson said. The trust announced the settlement, an undisclosed sum paid to Lila’s mother, Rachael Mincherton, and her partner, Darren Marsland, on Oct. 30, 2026.
“We are pleased that this settlement has been reached and approved by the court. This was a tragic case in which there were clear missed opportunities in Lila’s care. We express once more our sincere and unreserved apologies to the Lila’s family for this tragedy. As a Trust, we have made and will continue to make improvements to ensure we learn from this case,” the spokesperson said.
The trust admitted failings in the assessment, diagnosis and treatment of the girl’s bacterial meningitis, and accepted that those failings materially contributed to her death. It also admitted that the meningitis was already present when staff assessed her on the Children’s Observation and Assessment Unit, and accepted that she should have stayed in the hospital and been started on intravenous antibiotics.
A Mother’s Question in A&E
Lila fell ill on Dec. 27, 2023, two days after Christmas, during a family outing to Dove Stone Reservoir. She had a headache, neck pain, a sore throat and was vomiting.
Mincherton, a district nurse for the same NHS trust that would go on to diagnose her daughter, brought her to Tameside Hospital at about 5 p.m. By then the girl also had a high heart rate, a fever and lethargy. Her mother asked an advanced nurse practitioner directly whether meningitis was possible. The practitioner suspected tonsillitis and said blood tests would be taken.
A senior doctor approved her transfer to the pediatric accident and emergency department (A&E) without visually examining her. Staff admitted her to the Children’s Observation and Assessment Unit, where they diagnosed tonsillitis and discharged her at around 2:40 a.m. on Dec. 28 with oral antibiotics and a throat spray. Nobody kept her in for intravenous treatment — the standard hospital care for bacterial meningitis, a form of the disease that can turn life-threatening within hours, unlike the viral form.
Mincherton woke at about 9 a.m. at the family home in Hyde, Greater Manchester, England, and found Lila unresponsive in the bed. She and paramedics tried to resuscitate the girl. A pupil at Flowery Field Primary School, Lila was pronounced dead at 9:19 a.m., two weeks before her sixth birthday. A post-mortem examination established that she had died of pneumococcal meningitis.
The Jury Found Her Death Preventable
An inquest opened in October 2024, and a jury at Stockport Coroners’ Court heard evidence from May 27 to June 5, 2025. At the end of the hearing in June 2025, the jury concluded that the death was preventable and contributed to by neglect. Jurors found that admission, plus appropriate broad-spectrum antibiotics within the first hour of triage, would have prevented her death.
Coroner Chris Morris issued a Prevention of Future Deaths report afterward. He raised concerns about the recording and sharing of clinical information across a mix of paper and digital systems, about details lost between departments, about child sepsis screening guidance and about adherence to national meningitis guidelines.
Medical negligence lawyers at Irwin Mitchell brought the legal claim on the family’s behalf. Jack Bookey, a medical negligence lawyer at the firm who represented the family, said the trust’s admissions provided important answers about the care Lila received in her final hours. He added that the family hopes telling her story raises awareness of meningitis and prevents a similar death.
Bereavement Packs in Lila’s Name
“Losing Lila is something we’ll never come to terms with,” her mother said. Mincherton has said the girl and her older sister, Ava, 16, adored each other.
Her parents set up Lila’s Light in her name, a charity that supplies bereavement support packs to children who have lost a brother or sister. It has raised about £33,000.
Mincherton has a message for any parent sitting in an emergency department with a sick child. “Parents should never be afraid to ask questions or seek help or a second opinion if they’re concerned,” she said.
Two Families, Two Coroners’ Courts
In a separate case, Dylan Cope, nine, of Rhiwderin, Newport, died on Dec. 14, 2022, of septic shock caused by a ruptured appendix. A GP had referred him to A&E with suspected appendicitis eight days earlier, and Sam Hayden, a pediatric nurse practitioner who has since qualified as an advanced nurse practitioner, examined him; his father, Laurence Cope, believed at the time that she was a doctor and said he learned the truth “some time after” the death. Staff wrongly attributed the boy’s abdominal pain to flu and discharged him from the Grange University Hospital in the early hours of Dec. 7 with no documented examination by a doctor. Caroline Saunders, the senior coroner for Gwent, found that a registrar examination would have led to tests and surgery and avoided the death, and concluded that neglect by hospital staff contributed to it. His parents, Corinne Cope and Laurence Cope, now campaign for a documented face-to-face senior-doctor examination before any child referred to A&E by a GP is sent home.
In another case, Dena Collins, 28, a primary school teacher from Eltham in south-east London, died at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich on Jan. 12, 2023, of a heart attack caused by a blood clot. A GP had diagnosed her leg pain as muscular three days earlier; she attended the hospital on Jan. 11 with a crutch after four days of leg pain, fever and diarrhoea, and staff noted the possibility of a blood clot and recorded a positive D-dimer test before diagnosing a possible ruptured cyst and telling her to return the next day for a scan. Assistant coroner Linda Jacobs said identification and a treatment dose would have avoided the fatal cardiac arrest, and found errors of clinical judgment in primary and secondary care that did not amount to neglect.
