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

@skilover2 there were no excuses in my post because I don't know and neither do you.

All we have is sensationalist reporting before the facts are known.

I just think we should hold off on attacking people especially the child's mother when we don't know the story just the limited information released.

Meanwhile people on here are looking up the family on Facebook ffs!

I hope police get slammed for this!

how disgusting when they were already known to SS

sorry. Wrote the wrong people!

I expect more will come out about what actually happened. If the family needed weekly visits by social services then there was a serious issue. I can’t understand why there wasn’t an immediate welfare check if the little boy was ‘at risk’ which presumably he was.

What more should social services have done?

Sorry. I meant the police. Edited my post now.

That is incredibly, incredibly sad, but I can’t see what else SS could have done?

Obviously I don’t know why social services were involved in the first place, but this sounds like a heartbreaking but entirely accidental tragedy. I hope the social worker who found him is getting some support.

It’s difficult to imagine why the mum left it so long without seeing her child, but again, we don’t know the full story.

This is unbearably sad. I hope people take from it...keep in touch with your family, if you haven't seen a neighbour for a few days when you normally would, knock on the door, if you hear a child crying all the time and it's out of the ordinary consider that knock on the door or call to 111. I don't think the SW is to blame, they can't break doors down and people avoid SW visits all the time. Maybe mum could have done more or maybe she had been told not to contact them. There must be plenty of single parents out there living alone with small children, if you do, are you confident someone would realise or raise the alarm if you hadn't been in contact for a couple of days?

The “mother” had two other children but that doesn’t necessarily mean Bronson’s dad was their dad.

This. It’s absolutely heartbreaking what happened.

I’m shocked that the police didn’t bother to do a welfare check after the alerts from the social worker. And the mother failing to check on her tiny child for two weeks over Christmas is just bizarre. Many questions to be answered but for once it doesn’t seem fair to blame SS.

It is very sad indeed, poor kid. I do wonder where the mum was though. It sounds like she left without out her son prior to Christmas and then the boy wasn't discovered until the 9th of January. Surely most mothers would be in contact daily or even multiple times a day to check on their child if they left them at all and if they were not getting an answer they would go to the house and check themselves on their child?

Unfortunately it seems this child was subject to neglect, perhaps the Dad did look after him but he died and he was left alone. I do think the mother does have to take some of the blame here.

Very odd that the mum had no contact. Especially over Christmas.

I can't what else SS could have done. Presumably they thought that they had forgotten the appointment or were out.

I that picture, Brendon is covered in bruises abs a rated on his face. Toddlers do bruise of course. But they are in odd places.

Bronson not Brendan.

Such an awful thing to happen. The social worker is not at fault here, if they hadn’t kept going back and eventually got hold of a key then how long would it have taken for them to be found? It seemed like nobody else cared enough to bother. If you had been unsuccessfully contacting a family member knowing they were in poor health and also looking after a toddler then you would be outside their house kicking the door in yourself.

The mother is the exact type I expect, very chaotic life going by her social media.

Why has my comment been deleted? Posters are searching the families social media which is absolutely not ok.

Totally the mother's fault. I'm guessing she may have had mental health problems or been vulnerable herself in some way. But nothing excuses leaving a toddler and not checking on him.

I'm posting this to add to other's support for the social worker, who actually went above and beyond to get into the building. My sympathy is with her.

I’m sure social services and the police work together in lots of situations where children are at risk and there must be policies and arrangements they follow straight away when a child is reported in a situation like this. It doesn’t make sense to me that the police didn’t turn up. Alarm bells would be going off straight away even for the average person.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12973971/Bronson-Battersby-death-Lincolnshire-Police-refers-watchdog-IOPC.html

Their bodies were found by a social worker who had twice called at the house to no answer in the days beforehand, alerting police on both occasions.

Unless the mother was in a coma, she is absolutely to blame. What kind of parent goes for 2 weeks without checking on their 2 year old who is living with a man who is known to be ill? And over Christmas?

I think you'd all be pretty horrified if social services were to tear down your front door because you don't happen to be home when they unexpectedly come round.

I think also, from what I can glean from various documentaries lik Ambulance and 24 Hours in police custody attempts to gain entry are only possible by police.

There were cases where SW have been attacked/ killed when tried to go on own so they have to have police backup. I don't know if this might have applied here

I think this might be the most likely.
It seems the father is probably already dead by the time police were called.
Police call handlers (not officers) who received the call have to prioritise based on the information provided and it clearly wasn't treated as a Grade 1 priority, we don't know what had been reported by the SW. It appears in any case this poor child may have already been dead by Jan 2nd.

It's just bloody tragic. Kid didn't stand a chance.

I am not usually a fan of social services but in this case I think they are not responsible.

The police didn't follow up when they were asked. The mother didn't bother checking on her child (though there may be shades of grey here we know nothing about - maybe DV or in hospital or mental health breakdown) the neigbhours didn't notice anything was amiss - no one going in and out, child crying, dog whimpering, the poor father keeled over and died so can hardly be responsible.

It's easy to blame his mother but we don't really know what was going on in her life but the police seem on the face of it to have failed without question when they chose to ignore a serious concern raised by SW.

It's heartening to read of stories where children were saved and moved onto a loving stable life. Hope he is thriving and happy xxx