A hospital trust has admitted its negligence caused a boy to suffer catastrophic brain damage.

The family of five-year-old Vinnie-Ray Jeffery, of Bromley, have spoken of the precious milestones he has been robbed of due to the brain damage and hearing loss he suffered as a baby.

Grandmother Viv Randall says he is a "happy soul" who is adored by his seven young cousins and three-year-old brother Jenson.

However, the youngster will never walk or talk and will need 24-hour care for the rest of his life after a series of blunders by midwives in the days following his birth at the Princess Royal University Hospital in Locksbottom in September 2016.

If a community midwife who attended him at home on the day after he was born had arranged a blood test, then his brain damage, a type known as kernicterus, would have been prevented.

However, she and other midwives who visited him on a total of three occasions in the first 10 days, failed to follow the hospital’s own guidelines that state any baby who appears jaundiced within 24 hours of life should be urgently tested and referred to hospital to prevent kernicterus.

There was also a failure to heed two warnings in his notes that there was a need to be vigilant for jaundice due to a blood condition his mother Kerry Randall has.

They instead told Kerry, who at the time was a first-time mother aged 20, to expose him to sunlight to help clear the jaundice, action that would do nothing to avert the danger Vinnie-Ray was in.

Due to the lack of treatment, Vinnie’s brain was exposed to high levels of bilirubin, the substance that causes yellowing of the skin and eye.

Viv and Kerry have been fighting for justice for Vinnie since he was a few months old with the help of specialist brain injury solicitors at law firm JMW.

However, it is only now that the trust has accepted it was its negligence that has devastated his life and said it is willing to apologise and pay compensation for the lifelong specialist care he needs.

Viv said: “We were all so excited when Kerry found out she was pregnant with Vinnie.

"Kerry and Vinnie-Ray’s dad Reece anticipated him being a footballer because he used to kick so much.

"Meanwhile I had visions of him running towards me shouting ‘nanny!’ But we’ll never see any of those milestones because they’ve been taken away from him.

"He loves lights and music, but we will never know what goes through his mind.

“I manage a children’s nursery which Vinnie attended. The other children all loved him, and he helped to teach them about being inclusive."

However, Viv says it’s a tragedy that Vinnie won’t have his own independent life one day as the other children will.

“The fact that there are guidelines written in black and white to prevent Vinnie’s situation from happening, but that these are not followed, is staggering," she added.

"With consequences that can be so severe, why would the trust not do everything possible to ensure midwives take the right steps?

"It was even written in Vinnie’s discharge notes that there was a need to be vigilant, but these were ignored.

"We just don’t want any other families to suffer as ours have.

"Vinnie is adored by all his family and doesn’t want for anything, but he’s been robbed of the future he should have had and we’ve been robbed of it too.”

It was when Vinnie began making abnormal jerky movements when he was about six-weeks-old that he was referred to paediatricians.

He was admitted to the Evelina Hospital on February 1 for five days of investigations, including an MRI brain scan which revealed areas of damage and Vinnie-Ray was diagnosed with kernicterus.

Steven Brown, a partner specialising in kernicterus cases at JMW said: “The failure to follow the treatment guidelines in the first day of Vinnie’s life have had a profound effect on him and those of his whole family.

"While I am pleased that Vinnie and his family have succeeded in their battle to have the hospital accept responsibility for his injuries, nothing can turn back the clock.

“Kerry and Viv are unwavering in their dedication to provide the very best life for Vinnie and obtain justice and have conducted themselves with great dignity throughout.

"We can only hope that the trust has learned lessons from Vinnie’s case and it ensures that similar appalling errors are never repeated by its staff.”

A spokeswoman for Princess Royal University Hospital, said: "We apologise once again to the family of Vinnie-Ray for failing to recognise jaundice after his birth, and for failing to escalate his care appropriately, despite him being at increased risk.

"Since Vinnie-Ray’s birth in 2016, we have made a number of changes to prevent a recurrence, including enhanced training on the post-natal ward to help identify jaundice, and the introduction of a 24-hour jaundice clinic, resulting in faster referral and assessment of jaundice in new-borns."