Police say that the tragic deaths of Fiona Pilkington and Frankie Hardwick acted as a "catalyst" for changing the way they deal with vulnerable people.

Former assistant chief constable Chris Tew gave evidence at the inquest into their deaths yesterday and revealed the conclusions of a review carried out by the force.

He outlined policy changes and training programmes put into place after the deaths and said: "This incident has been somewhat a catalyst to focus the mind in terms of protecting vulnerable adults."

In December 2007, the report was presented to a review panel and after that police chiefs decided it would become policy to categorise repeated offences against disabled people as "hate crimes", meaning they would be taken more seriously.

Before this, the family's calls were dealt with as incidents involving "anti-social behaviour".

Mr Tew explained "Now, once the crime is identified as a hate crime, it is pulled out of the system of the general melee of anti-social behaviour."

Coroner Olivia Davison said: "It would seem in the context of a history of abuse, these incidents would not have been considered anti-social behaviour, they would have been considered a crime, crimes against somebody because of their disability.

"If a police officer reflected on these incidents, an attempt might have been made to apprehend the individuals who were doing this, charge them and bring them before a youth court, rather than passing them on to the council who will write them a letter they will probably ignore."

This year, Leicestershire police have trained 2,000 officers in learning how to detect "vulnerable" people.

They have also started work on a new computer system, which allows officers to search various databases from their patrol vehicles.

It is hoped the system will be able to flag up a person's history and whether they are in need of particular help.