One of the saddest stories in a long time TW: Neglect/child death

[Perjo]

I read this this morning and it has to be one of the saddest, most avoidable child deaths I've read about in a long time. Especially where it says he was still alive on January 2nd.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/47b4c6b2-673d-4c43-8ef0-b8ba05c47f0a?shareToken=39b0f7f8b3c90882aca021214db91159

It’s completely devastating, that poor poor boy.

Social services are not at fault in this situation - that poor social worker tried to visit twice and then risked her job to gain access to the property, to then have the trauma of finding them deceased, and the mother, who hadn’t checked on her child since before Christmas, has the audacity to place the blame at her door? I’m floored.

The boy was found curled up at his dad's legs 😢😢😢😢😢 saddest bit 🙁🙁

The mother may not have been allowed contact without ss involvement. It sounds like the police may be at fault. Why did they not act sooner? Maybe the social worker didn’t think it was urgent. No matter what happened it’s very sad.

Agree with others: on the face of it the social worker was the person who did the very most to try to help this small child.

I can't see that anyone else did anything like as much for him.

The social worker contacted the police twice and got a key from the LL - which if all had been well and the dad later complained she’d likely have got in trouble for - so she clearly thought it was urgent.

we’ve no idea if or how often the mother tried to get in touch, if she spoke to SS, or what the situation is so people blaming her are jumping the gun.

We do know that the police have fucked up massively and have questions to answer

Sarah, 43, told The Sun: 'If social services had done their job Bronson would still be alive.
'I can't believe it. They can't let them get away with this. We have to be able to rely on social workers to keep our children safe.'

no our children should rely on their parent/s to keep them safe. Poor sweet child.

If the reports are accurate and the police were called by the social worker twice, I am surprised as in my experience the police usually take such concerns seriously and would turn up quickly for a welfare check.

In fact a family member of mine needed a welfare check last night and the police called me to find out the living situation.

The ones in fault here are the police who did not do a wellfare check when the ss reported no one opened the door and the child mums who did not try to contact her child in so long and she did not call tye police. When my children are spending holidays with their dad I do have videocwith them, if their dad wouldn't be calling me or answering my calls I would be knocking on his door that night and calling the police too.

Are these cases happening more often or are they just getting publicised more

Poor little boy.

the mother wants to take a look in the mirror before pointing the finger at anyone else. What exactly did she do to look out for her own child’s wellbeing

You have contradicted yourself in this post so I'm confused,

The social worker visited twice and called the police each time.

On the third visit they gained entry. So why is the social worker being blamed?
They don't have the power to force entry to a home but the police could if they visited and were concerned.

Matt Warman, the Conservative MP for Boston & Skegness, told Times Radio the case underlined the importance of checking in on neighbours.

This is part of it. And yet, someone on mumsnet posted a few weeks ago that they felt concerned that they never saw one of their neighbour's children and got absolutely roasted for being a busy body. We don't have much collective sense of responsibility for each other as a society or community, particularly in urban areas. All it would have taken is for a neighbour to ring the police.

I have read this article on a couple of different sites - maybe I read it wrong ?
It refers to the mum having a argument with the father but I don't think it said anything about her moving out ?
Maybe he had custody ? Or maybe the boy was spending the holidays with him.
But I wonder why mum had no contact since before Christmas? I guess the full story will come out in the enquiry.

This is an indicator of social isolation. When I was caring for my parents, social services sent me a form to list who in practice my emergency contacts were if I fell ill.

Well...nobody, in practice. The next door neighbour was elderly and the other neighbours who'd a large family of Thier own. That was just how it was.

And if the SW obtained a key from the landlord why the hell didn’t police do that?

That poor little boy. RIP 💐

My elderly neighbour was only "not heard from" for 1 day; her carer asked me what I thought she should do without a key so we rang 999 for a welfare check. Police came immediately, then tracked down her nearest family member and GP. Surely that's what we should be aiming for?

As for what can we actually do, we can hold statutory agencies to account; we can stop accepting this "lessons learned" bullshit. Police should have gone straight round the first time the social worker alerted them, with a view to demanding to see the child.

I searched to see if a thread has been made about this awful case already before cresting one and I'm so glad people are also massively questioning the 'mother' like I did reading the article.

His mother accused social workers of failing to keep her child safe. Sarah Piesse, 43, said: “If social services had done their job, Bronson would still be alive. But they didn’t do anything"

I could bloody scream at this statement from the mother.

Is she having a laugh?

How about as the child's MOTHER, you take responsibility for keeping YOUR child safe, instead of leaving it to someone else and then blaming them when something goes wrong?

Where were YOU when this little boy needed help?

Why is it always someone else's fault?

What kind of mother just abandons her child?

And finally, why were SS even involved in the first place? There's a reason for that.

No-one knows why the mother had not seen the child or whether she was even able to.

My son (adopted) was found in similar circumstances but birth mother was unconscious due to extreme alcohol abuse. Thankfully, my ds was still alive as, even at the tender age of 2, he'd eaten leftovers from bin bags lying around on the floor and he was discovered in a much shorter timescale. I dread to think of the outcome if someone hadn't called and forced their way in. He went into foster care but then was given back to her on a trial basis. The danger she put him in on the next occasion is terrifying. After that he was taken off her permanently and put up for adoption. There will be no long lost family reunion with Nicky and Davina for him, he absolutely hates her. This little boy Brandon deserved a much better life. It breaks my heart to think of his suffering.

Rather than blame social services, why did the mother not go and bash the door down when she hadn't been able to get in contact?? Especially upsetting that this happened over Christmas and new years. Did she not try to have any contact with her 2 year old during this time?? Beggars belief she is now trying to blame social services. An absolute disgrace

That poor little boy.

And that poor social worker. S/he did everything they could. S/wrs can't break into people's homes, which is why they called the police. No one should be blaming him/her.

When my dc were tiny there was a dreadful case near me where a man in the army was posted away, his wife died at home and the two children (toddler and baby) starved to death. He came home and found them all dead. When my dh went away for work I made my mum ring me every evening to check I was alive. This was pre mobile phones being a thing.

I cried all morning when I read this story on my phone when I woke up, as I made breakfast for my 5 year old she wanted to know why I was so teary and I had to pretend I had hayfever.

The mum is a disgrace, but I agree the police should have broken in and checked.

The fact is some people aren't fit to have children, the worst part the child was on the at risk with council, so why didn't they break in?

I keep telling myself that the poor child at the very least thought he wasn't alone and Daddy just wouldn't wake up, he wasn't completely alone. Also death from dehydration means he would have been sleepy and not in agony. Its how they end a lot of terminal patients , its the only thing I'm holding onto that the poor child didn't have a painful death.

I feel sick to the stomach and really struggled at the school gate this morning saying goodbye to my child.

I'm sorry but this is just excuses. If you couldn't get in contact with your child for days on end, any decent mother would cross hell and high water to establish contact. It was the social worker who went to the police, not the mother.