How is this not murder?(upsetting)

[OhToBeASeahorse]

A mother has appeared in court today charged with the manslaughter of her toddler.

She left her, alone, for 6 days.

How can this not be murder? I don't understand.

the relevant healthcare agencies need to have a long hard look at themselves and make sure there is real and impactful learning
How can you learn that a young mother will clear off for several days leaving her baby to die - this will be another rent a mob screaming blame session - let's sack a few SWs, HVs,
Where were her family/ friends/ neighbours? Choosing not to get involved with a v difficult scenario.

@GreyHare - I have plenty of empathy, and all for the little girl who died at the moment. No doubt there is plenty of back story to come.

The cause of death was starvation and dehydration, so even if she had killed her before she left it was an agonising needless death. That’s the top and bottom of it.

@ItscoldinAlaska

There is some confusion about the date of death. They have stated that she neglected the child and has admitted to causing her death 'Kudi admitted the manslaughter of her daughter between December 4 and 12.' So between 4th December - 11th December 2019. She left the flat on 5th December, so it is possible she caused the death before leaving the flat. I wouldn't jump to conclusions.

Though the cause of death still attributes starvation and dehydration, which either took place whilst the mother was present or after she had left. Both are similarly unpalatable.

She should be forcibly sterilised and spend her life behind bars

Everyone has human rights - everyone - including the bad people.

@Cam77 dont be so ridiculous. Closing SureStart centre is crap but not the cause of this baby's death.

I find your comment almost offensive.

@HoppingPavlova

This is why kids shouldn’t have kids.

Give it a rest. I had a kid when I was a kid. I didn't leave him alone for a week. He's perfectly alive.

This is exactly why I left safeguarding. The thought of things like this happening on my caseload (when the process and the organisation you work for, seems to inhibit good, intensive practice) kept me awake at night. I would literally go through every case in my head on a Friday night to check I had done the right things that week and felt worried all weekend. It doesn't surprise me at all that there was no SW allocated, there was probably some poor FSW caseholding.

The mother is 18 and was vulnerable herself.

And I'm not making excuses for her because she did a terrible terrible thing and deserves her punishment but she is not a murderer.

I'm not sure she had the mental capacity to understand the gravity of what she did. I imagine everyone here is a parent or at the very least a capable and responsible adult. It might seem obvious to us that abandoning a baby for 6 days = death. But I'm not sure that young woman did truly understand that.

@TeachesOfPeaches

I feel sorry for the baby and the mother. I can only imagine what she has been through since being on her own from 14 years old.

She will also be a target in prison as 'baby killers' are considered the lowest of the low.

Same here

What a beautiful little child...

This is a horrific case, and I could weep for that little girl. How frightened and lonely she must have felt, and how dreadful for her to have died from starvation and dehydration.

But I wouldn't call the mother a monster. She was a child herself when she had her, and ran away from home at 14. She didn't run away because she had a fucking brilliant home life, and a happy family!

And her father said 'we haven't seen her since she was 14!' Did he not LOOK? Did he not contact the police to put out a search for his DAUGHTER?

And what about social services? Why was this girl not being monitored better? Why did no-one at that house she was at hear the cries of the baby?

Something really really fucking wrong with all of this.

And what about the father of the child? Where is HE?

@Cam77

This government has spent a decade cutting all kinds of child services to the bone. Sure Start, youth services, and no funding for voluntary organizations. Provision of children’s homes have been handed over to the private sector to save money and they’re doing a worse job. Constant cuts mean a worse general society and provision for those most in need. Nobody who cares about vulnerable people should vote Conservative.

Nothing offensive about this at all. I agree with you, @Cam77.

We will never know whether better social care provision will have helped here. But it is indisputable that the lack of intervention will, in some instances, save lives.

The decimation of services contributes massively to this kind of thing.

This is a clearly troubled very young woman living in difficult circumstances.

There should have been multiple opportunities for things going wrong to be picked up - both of them should have had a social worker, sure start services should have been available, good quality HV services should have been available, highly trained workers specialising in mother & baby unit with should have been available, the fact they were/are not is the fault of multiple governments over the years.

The backstory to this case just sounds horrific.

[quote Suzi888]@C130
“You have no idea what was going on in her life”.

No. And I don’t care either. My opinion.

Don’t worry I’m sure she will end up in a nice environment with people like you feeling so very sorry for her. She will get to live her life, unlike that poor child.[/quote]
The thing is, if people like you had cared about her circumstances, it may have been enough to save her daughter.

[quote OhToBeASeahorse]@Cam77 dont be so ridiculous. Closing SureStart centre is crap but not the cause of this baby's death.

I find your comment almost offensive.[/quote]
Closing SureStart centres did not directpy cause the death of this child, but the cutting of funding to services which support young/less able parents (of which SureStart is one of), is a contributing factor to the additional struggle these women go through, and the remaining services become massively overstretched.

It's entirely reasonable to discuss the closure of SureStart as a small contributing factor to this and other cases of its ilk.

But she was in a mother and baby home - how can no one have been aware

In the legal definition of murder means the prosecution have to prove to beyond reasonable doubt that the mother intended to kill her child.

I actually cannot bring myself to read the story itself. I know that there is going to be a backstory but that poor child. For her sake, I hope that whatever happened, happened before she was left alone.

@OhToBeASeahorse

But she was in a mother and baby home - how can no one have been aware

It's not staffed. It's a supported living block (hands off approach) rather than a home (hands on approach).

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz fair enough, I see that.

its one of the reasons kids shouldnt have kids. Because teenagers CAN OFTEN be immature, impulsive and self centred. They have an underdeveloped sense of personal responsibility and OFTEN require support to parent adequately.
The ones that do ok at it, are often the ones that have a decent support network in their own family. Have a child doing its own thing from a young age, history of impulsive behaviour. There were so many factors here that could have prevented this. That poor baby

There's a lot that we don't know about the case - it appears she lived with her mother, the child's grandmother, so possibly she didn't leave her alone. She lived in supported accommodation, but safeguarding checks don't seem to have been done.

It's clearly a very upsetting case, and the child's death is a tragedy, but without knowing the full facts of the case we shouldn't rush to judgement.

@kirinm the baby died due to starvation. So even if the mother was there, she wasnt feeding her. I'm not sure that's any better

I feel sorry for both children involved here. It’s obvious there’s much more to this. Missing at 14, in a mother and baby unit and the father not involved. It’s awful that more people didn’t help out