A grieving mother is calling upon the police to review the way they investigate cot deaths.

Barbara Marshall says she accepts the police have a job to do but claims she and her family were treated insensitively after the death of her nine-week-old daughter Tamara.

The 40-year-old, of Hewitson Road, Darlington, told how her four other children were turned out of their home whilst it was searched by officers.

Tamara stopped breathing on April 14 and was rushed to Darlington Memorial Hospital.

Initially, Mrs Marshall and her husband, Norman, were not allowed to accompany Tamara when she was transferred to Newcastle General Hospital - where she lost her fight for life on April 18.

It was only when the couple insisted that they were allowed to rejoin their daughter.

They then learned that police were treating their home as a crime scene and their four older children, aged between 18 and 11, were not allowed inside.

Mrs Marshall said that she had asked police to inform her if they were going to examine the house so she could make arrangements for her other children.

"The police hadn't brought any social services people or anything along. Fortunately, my two-year-old daughter was with a neighbour and eventually another neighbour took the other children in," she added.

She said that she was also not warned that her baby's clothes had been cut up for forensic tests.

Mrs Marshall believes there should be more co-operation between police, social services and support groups when dealing with such tragedies.

"I'm not bothered about the enquiries but it's the way the family was treated.

"It's not just because I've lost a daughter - although that's hard enough - but I really don't want this to happen to any other parents ever again." Colin Brook at the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths said: "At the moment the ways that various organisations respond does vary quite dramatically and it does sometimes happen that parents are made to feel distressed and criminalised."

An inquest into Tamara's death has been opened and adjourned and police are not treating the death as suspicious.

A police spokewoman said: "In cases of this nature we try our best to conduct our enquiries in a caring and sensitive manner, but we have certain policies and procedures that have to be followed and that includes an examination of where the baby was found."