It's utterly tragic and completely wrong that this should ever happen to any child 😢😢😢
There are sadly, so many cases like this - Baby P, Victoria Climbe, Alfie Steele to name just three.
While it absolutely should be the case that every single call is answered, I'm not sure people realise how very over stretched services are. I am absolutely not saying it is right, just stating a fact.
To give an example, I grew up in a medium sized town. In the 80s and 90s, my father was a police officer. In those days, the divisional HQ in the town centre paraded on shift with 18 officers. There were then two smaller stations, each parading on with 4 each and one tiny one in the rural parts that had 2, or a desk sergeant plus 1. So, each shift had 28 officers.
Now, the smaller stations gone and HQ parade on with just 9 officers per shift!
The deputy head at the school where I teach told me that local SS are desperately overstretched and this is in an area of high deprivation where they are absolutely needed.
As schools, we are stretched and trying to plug whatever gaps we can, often with limited success. I have a child in my form who have a child who is severely disabled. There is no neglect but they could desperately use more support, except there is no capacity.
Ambulances are the same - an elderly person my mum.cares for fell, cut head, suspected broken hip. Should be a priority call, except it took 5 hours for an ambulance because all were tied up on jobs.
We so desperately need more social workers, police, school staff etc 😥 to be able to get to every single call quickly.
Cases like this absolutely should not happen under any circumstances, but I do think it's important to realise that it isn't always the services at fault.