The family of a toddler killed by her adoptive father said she would still be alive today if social services had not ignored their pleas for custody and allowed her to live with her biological siblings.

Matthew Scully-Hicks, 31, was jailed for life on Tuesday with a minimum term of 18 years for the murder of his 18-month-old daughter Elsie, a “young, vulnerable and defenceless child”.

He referred to the little girl as "Satan dressed up in a baby gro" and inflicted a catalogue of injuries, including two broken legs, in the months before he shook and beat her to death at his home in Llandaff, Cardiff in May 2016.

Elsie suffered broken ribs, a broken leg, bleeding on the brain and a fractured skull and died in hospital four days after she was admitted.

But her violent murder would have been prevented had she been allowed to remain with her biological family, who were only informed of her death seven months later.

Elsie’s birth grandmother, Sian O'Brien, launched proceedings in the family court to become her legal guardian when she was two months old, it can now be reported.