Toddlers and children being killed by parents etc?

[faithfulbird20]

What can we do about this? It seems like so many kids are being killed. Get health visitors to visit more often?

Incentivise not having children in the first place.

There are not enough police, and there are not enough social workers. Funding for vital services has been cut to the bone, and people should really fucking consider the impact of those cuts on the most vulnerable in society when deciding how to vote next time.

I agree with this, but on the other hand, Baby P was killed in 2007.

@KitchenKrisis

Elle your talking about what's in place.

I'm talking about the gap between sw liason with a feckless lying person avoiding them and stopping that gap.

That's the gap where baby star was Tragically killed and Peter connelly.
So moving forward I'd like to see an automated trigger put in place, which takes feckless persons excuses out of the equation because a search will be triggered if the child isn't found at their supposed address.

At the moment, the system seems to be geared around the parents, or feckless person randomly with the dc. Hopefully a trigger system to check the child's safety would make abusers think twice because its less likely they can keep the dc hidden.

Most of the time all will be OK and nothing will happen but on those occasions where abuse looks likely then they can do the removal stuff.

It's just something to remove what seems to be the huge weakness of a sly abuser running rings around "over worked" sw.

But this is what I’m saying, there aren’t enough police available to do that.

I agree, there should be a trigger system in place but there are not enough police on the ground to be able to do that at the moment.

Social workers ARE overworked. I’m not saying that’s any excuse, you get some shit ones, but the case loads are almost impossible to manage and the red tape involved in actually removing a child is ridiculous.

I am not a social worker, I worked with young adults in supported accommodation who had grown up in care. These young adults sometimes had babies of their own and all of them were on either a CIN or a CP plan. Social workers relied on us to do checks on this babies, we weren’t trained in child protection but we saw them daily - it could be weeks between social worker visits.

It was not unheard of for the mothers to take the babies and move to a different area, meaning that a different health visitor and social worker would need to be allocated to the child, it’s quite easy for these children to slip under the net and it shouldn’t be.

The whole system needs to change, and funds need to be poured into policing and the social care system before we will see any difference.

@Greysofa

Change is needed to recognise the effects that generation after generation of people who are unable to parent having child after child is having. Parents who are unable to put their own needs behind those of their child be it through ill health, addiction or just pure selfishness. Children are being damaged from the day they are born in some cases but because the bar is set so low in terms of what is expected from parenting - ‘good enough’, this is accepted.

Agree.

The thing is the laws that are meant to protect you don't actually work for example clares law supposed to tell you if your partner is more likely than not to hurt you doesn't work unless he has convictions my ex arrested several times in his first marriage at the end of his second marriage also with his ex fiance and its rumoured he has been arrested in between all for violent acts towards women and children can pass just fine is now working in a job where he needs to pass a dbs check and he has passed this man literally bounced a man's head off his car bonnet leaving a dent and got away with it

The police need to change and actually start protecting people

Plus everything else obviously

@ElleStartingOver good post

@Theunamedcat it's so true, you have to do something really bad to even be arrested, the police just don't care.

And even if someone is known to be dangerous and violent, they still can have access to children which the mother then has to provide! Disgusting to put the needs of an abuser before their victims.

I am in Scotland and I think the smacking ban and family nurse is a great idea. Not sure if its in England too but its a more intensive health visitor for very young mums, involved more in proactively teaching how to parent for the child's first 2 years for children who could potentially be higher risk rather than just a routine review service. I've never used the service myself and can imagine with NHS staffing and beurocracy its not a catch all situation but I am very positive about the service and would consider doing it myself at some point.

However if you ever look at the charity Abernecessities and see the kind of situations some mums and children are having to live in I guess its inevitable. Like mums who have fled domestic abuse who get referred to them who literally have the clothes on their back, no beds for the children and heavily pregnant mother, no kettle or hot water to make bottles safely. I guess the severe limitations around mental health provision are not helping.

Also I guess you have to proactively access support which you are not inclined to do. My friend was detained under the mental health act for a few months and her partner was trying to look after 2 kids full time at home while working from home fulltime and go and visit her in hospital every night. He was drowning but didn't want to get anyone involved and there didn't seem to be any trigger from her admission to the health visitor. I had to practically beg him to get in touch with the hv to get some emergency childcare.

@sqirrelfriends it’s true - I can’t believe no action was taken in this chaotic situation for example

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-46750678.amp

Parents who are under social services need to stop being given chance after chance. I know 2 families through my place I work and reading their notes it is so obvious these children are being abused yet they are just told what they need to improve, go to a few meetings and hope none of them are killed in the process. None of these children have ever been took off their parents despite one of the parents yelling at one of the children who were in the car that he was going to kill them by driving into a train (this isn't even the worse thing that they have done) These children reported this back to the social worker and nothing has been done. Just more meetings and points to improve. It makes no sense.

Oh yes he still has access to his children and I'm forced to facilitate this even increasing it at one point to stop him controlling my life (he decreased it almost immediately) children services say he is emotionally abusive but not enough for intervention so I end up playing protective games with them so when he threatens not to see them to "punish" them or me I take him at his word and go out when he starts working himself up into a frenzy the kids don't go because we recognise the signs they are slow building but they are there it redirects him onto someone else granted but the local police never prosecute him he was charged once for no tax no insurance and parking on double yellows they even lowered that because it was a bank holiday and he said he couldn't get insurance on a bank holiday he had the car several MONTHS with no tax etc it wasn't a bank holiday for months! (Pre covid too)

Trying to get an abusive man arrested for abuse is hard

More social workers and health visitors so that children can be checked on regularly before school age.
Ban smacking.
Remove child related benefits so that parents have to work therefore using childcare where professionals would see children.
Much harsher sentences for those convicted in cases involving children.
Penalties for failure to report others where there are concerns or something that ensures people come forward and anonymous protection etc.

When violence becomes normalised for children - think of some of the computer games available and the numbers that have been reported watching Squid Game/Game of Thrones etc - then we’re surprised that as those children grow up their boundaries are completely off…? Obviously it’s the few for whom this is a problem but as we can plainly see the numbers are very sadly rising. So many parts of society are broken - it’s so truly sad.

Firstly we need laws to protect children, it is perfectly legal for me to slap, hit or thump my son if I want to, yet when he turns 18 this would then become an illegal assault. I can also scream in his face if I want, if I did that to my husband it would be domestic abuse.

Parents don’t receive intervention until it is too late, plus the intervention they receive isn’t actually suitable in most cases. Not only that, but when it becomes a situation where children themselves are removed those children don’t receive the intervention they need and deserve.
My son needs sensory therapy, theraplay and life story work as an absolute minimum, he only gets these things as I am fortunate enough to be able to afford them, if I couldn’t afford them he’d get nothing as he has been repeatedly been turned down for post adoption support as I’m not at the point of expressing a view to disrupt.

Children are put through regular contact, even where they have been placed for adoption and are yet to be matched with a prospective adopter, this has been shown to cause extreme levels of stress in children which causes further trauma. The state is well aware of this, but yet again, they see children as having no worth.

Parenting classes are hard to come by and generally carried out by people who lack even a basic understanding of attachment theory, PIES and ACEs.

As children me and my siblings were subjected to abuse and neglect by our mother and father, it took 3-4 years for any action to be taken, the action was letting our sister live with our father (who didn’t abuse, but failed to protect us before he left our mother), me and my brother were left behind, as I was 12 and a boy I was apparently old enough to prevent myself being abused, as a result everytime we escaped the police would return us. The same happened to my brother. My sister has severe substance abuse problems and mental health issues and has followed in our mothers footsteps and is essentially a younger version of her, my brother is an absolute doormat who is incapable of making any decisions because he is too scared it will be a wrong decision, I have a mental health condition and I’ve had an ED since the age of 13.

The way we are as adults is entirely expected, it is not a surprise. The issue is a traumatised child is pitied by the public, other parents etc like people on this thread. However the moment you turn 18 those same people see you as no more than a problem, a burden, a bad person. Unless we start seeing traumatised adults as actual people who need targetted and effective support nothing will change. My sister will continue to have children, she will continue to fail them because she hasn’t been parented, she hasn’t experienced love and no one has ever attempted to provide the help and support she actually needs. My brother however is a socially acceptable traumatised person, he is shy, withdrawn, quiet so he hits the good and worthy human criteria.

A society choosing not to support traumatised adults is one choosing to create more trauma.

I think they should have all their devices taken from them when they are accused to be looked at.
In alot of these cases after the child has died so much of the evidence of abuse is recorded on their phones as are text messages from abuser to abuser indicated their hate for the child and what they do to them.

There needs to be more lessons in schools around trying to get kids to speak out if they are being abused and what abuse is as alot of these kids might believe what is happening to them is normal.

And I agree with the poster that says women and children need to both be protected more.

More money put into social services, more checks made.

And tougher sentences, the sentencing is so poor usually for all that the child has suffered let alone their death.
I don't think they should be allowed out of prison. Ever.

Huge financial investment to support parents. There was a pilot research student done about 5 years back where family with children who were at risk of being taken into care were allocated a family support worker. The important bit each full family support worker was allocated 2 families. A contract with as agreed with the family that in order to prevent to kids being taken into care they would have to do x,y and s. The family support worker would pop in a random say 9 o’clock on a Thursday night to check the kids were bed. As to I would expect some of children ended up in care but the educational and health outcomes for the ones who stayed at home were far greater than those who ended up in care.

We know the first 2 years of life are the most important in a child’s education. Many children are being parented by parents with poor social skills, who are suspicious of education, who are disengaged from wide society and who live highly stressed lives. It’s a multi generation issue and part of the wider social issue and inequalities present in the U.K. Unless there is some substantial, long term changes then things won’t improve. New Labour tried to address it with their Every Child Matters agenda but 12 years is not enough to make substantial changes to a society.

When animals are under stress they kill their babies, and I do wonder if humans are a little bit the same - which is not in anyway to excuse or justify these awful cases, but I do think mums in particular are placed under a massive amount of pressure these days with little or no support. Perhaps better support both from services like sure start of free child care as well as more understanding in society about the need for extended family support would reduce these cases. Though I absolutely agree that in some cases the individuals are just evil. In those cases I think it's hard to stop them. I'm not even sure revealing previous convictions to new partners would help as often vulnerable women are so ready to listen to excuses or believe mem have changed. You can see that from threads on here.

I know sw over stretched and police too few.
The problem is, as pp your allowed to hit dc. Needs immediate banning.
People have no clue how to raise dc and in many cases as pp said they are in cycles of abuse themselves so why would they? We society need to step in at all different stages of education then more when someone becomes pregnant esp teen mums.

But even so it's far too easy to abuse and get away with it by batting off police and sw.
In some of these recent cases police did visit and they already had sw so they did have the resources.
. The issue is the resources were not used "effectively".

In baby stars case the sw was strung along... Batted off until it was too late.

In baby Stanley case the police turned up and did fuck all. But they were there.

The resources are not being used effectively and we need to look at why.

So for baby star, after the second turn down to the meet, the police should be triggered to do a well fair check including seeing a medic.

In baby Stanley case again the police can see evidence of violence etc so should have taken Stanley to medics for a check.

I don't accept the resources argument because they were there. The law is weighted to the patent and that's what needs to change.

It's just tough if someone has a dc taken for a check, if they are innocent there is nothing to worry about is there!! The child will be returned no issue.

It will save ££ in the long run and also when people start to realise they can't get away with it, smacking banned etc hopefully they won't risk it anymore.

These children need to be removed sooner but the problem with that is that there is a massive shortage in foster carers, so what do they do with all these children they remove?

My DP grew up in care, he was abused to the point of losing his sight when he was a baby and wasn’t removed permanently until he was seven, by which time They’d had 3 more children. The mother then moved to a different area, stayed under the radar and had 3 more children.

Thing is, I’ve seen the SS files,and from what they say she was very convincing in going along with going to the health visitor weekly, engaging with the authorities etc until they were satisfied. It was only because DP went to a boarding school for children with a visual impairment that he began to mention the abuse he was still suffering at home and SS came back on to the scene. I mean they were still on the scene but it was about then that more serious action was taken.

Thing is there need to be no second chances. If you have a child removed then that should be it. You should never again be allowed to have another one. personally I’d opt for sterilisation but since the human rights brigade seem to think these animals deserve more rights than the children they keep fecklessly supplying the care system with the children should simply be removed at birth and straight into the adoption system.

And we need to stop excusing abuse on the basis of mental health, the mother being in an abusive situation, all the other reasons why people seem to so often excuse child abuse from women rather than men. Unless there is proof that someone has asked for help and not been given it then they’re a murderer. It’s as simple as that.

If someone stays with a man who is abusing their children then they are equally culpable for the murders of those children, end of.

If a man has been arrested for violence against his wife then he needs to be given supervised access at best, but preferably no access at all.

And people need to seriously think about whether it’s appropriate to get involved with someone else after the breakdown of a relationship. Whether we like to admit it or not, the vast majority of children who are killed are killed at the hands of new partners, and while presumably the other parent goes along with it and is just as guilty, if they didn’t put their children in the position in the first place,then those children might not have been murdered.

Banning smacking is all very well but it won’t solve anything. Murder is already illegal, and people still do it. The kinds of people who murder their children aren’t going to pay attention to whether smacking is illegal. After all, to beat your child senseless doesn’t come under the general banner of smacking, so if they’re capable of that, and beating your child senseless is already against the law, what good is a smacking ban going to do?

@AlternativePerspective

These children need to be removed sooner but the problem with that is that there is a massive shortage in foster carers, so what do they do with all these children they remove?

My DP grew up in care, he was abused to the point of losing his sight when he was a baby and wasn’t removed permanently until he was seven, by which time They’d had 3 more children. The mother then moved to a different area, stayed under the radar and had 3 more children.

Thing is, I’ve seen the SS files,and from what they say she was very convincing in going along with going to the health visitor weekly, engaging with the authorities etc until they were satisfied. It was only because DP went to a boarding school for children with a visual impairment that he began to mention the abuse he was still suffering at home and SS came back on to the scene. I mean they were still on the scene but it was about then that more serious action was taken.

Thing is there need to be no second chances. If you have a child removed then that should be it. You should never again be allowed to have another one. personally I’d opt for sterilisation but since the human rights brigade seem to think these animals deserve more rights than the children they keep fecklessly supplying the care system with the children should simply be removed at birth and straight into the adoption system.

And we need to stop excusing abuse on the basis of mental health, the mother being in an abusive situation, all the other reasons why people seem to so often excuse child abuse from women rather than men. Unless there is proof that someone has asked for help and not been given it then they’re a murderer. It’s as simple as that.

If someone stays with a man who is abusing their children then they are equally culpable for the murders of those children, end of.

If a man has been arrested for violence against his wife then he needs to be given supervised access at best, but preferably no access at all.

And people need to seriously think about whether it’s appropriate to get involved with someone else after the breakdown of a relationship. Whether we like to admit it or not, the vast majority of children who are killed are killed at the hands of new partners, and while presumably the other parent goes along with it and is just as guilty, if they didn’t put their children in the position in the first place,then those children might not have been murdered.

Banning smacking is all very well but it won’t solve anything. Murder is already illegal, and people still do it. The kinds of people who murder their children aren’t going to pay attention to whether smacking is illegal. After all, to beat your child senseless doesn’t come under the general banner of smacking, so if they’re capable of that, and beating your child senseless is already against the law, what good is a smacking ban going to do?

Because it blurs the lines. Not with “normal” parents like you or I, but those that lack basic parenting skills anyway think it’s ok to smack their child. It’s easier to justify a smack, that becomes a punch because it’s legal.

I regularly see people smacking their children in public, if smacking were illegal I’d be able to call the police and hopefully it would be taken seriously.

No it’s not the cause but there is a zero tolerance policy with drink driving, why is a ‘little bit’ of violence ok toward a child?

And no it wouldn’t stop the shitty parents from hitting their kids still, but it would be a lot easier to intervene and prosecute if it was law that you couldn’t hit your children.

Banning smacking is part of the bigger picture so the by standers kmow it's not just a parent "disipling" their dc and not to interfere.
Once it's illegal there are perimeters and boundaries raised.
At the moment it's a wishy washy free for all.

Yy to trying to encourage more Foster careers.

Once dc have left home it's something I've thought of doing.

It's all a wishy washy bloody free for all and it shows at the other end when it comes to sentences. We do not value dc highly in our society.

More funding. Police,social workers,foster carers. Auxiliary services like children's centres, sure start ,youth services etc. A good mental health system that is running properly and works on prevention not just patching up people in crisis.

But when everyone that works in safeguarding is underpaid,overworked ,understaffed and underfunded kids will fall through the cracks. Because the people working there are just humans ,not gods or miracle workers.

Communication between police,SS, doctors,schools/nurseries should also improve. It's getting better but still not good enough and often it can be a postcode lottery.

Fund these systems properly and other issues as too high thresholds, kids not being seen ,not taken away quickly enough etc. will sort themselves out.

The idea of flagging up to the police that means an automatic visit is actually a good one.