Bronson Battersby is on my mind tonight.

[ThirtyFlirtynThriving]

Utterly utterly heartbreaking story. I have a 2 year old and I just can’t fathom.

I have terrible general anxiety’s no health anxiety and one of my worst fears is to die at home while in sole car of my children, they’re so young they wouldn’t know what to do, or what was happening.. they wouldn’t be able to get out of the house alone and the thought of them scared, unable to wake me, crying alone makes me feel sick and awful. Reading about poor Bronson Battersby has really made me think.

The rest of the family must be devastated and given the circumstances and just the small details known from the media that’s something you can never-not think about. How does one get over that kind of grief?!

I hope Bronson is at rest now 🩵

Why are people pointing the blame at SS here? The guy was a single parent, he had a heart attack! Do we check up on all single parents daily? No! It's a terribly sad and tragic incident.

I cannot fathom how a mother of 10 that already had one child die manages to go through Christmas Day and New Year without any contact with her 2 year old. To leave a child for weeks on end with a 60 year old man that has already had a heart attack is bloody irresponsible.

Where are people getting the information from that the child was a 'child in need' and mother had already had a child die?

I cant read the daily mail as I have ad blocker, does it say that in there?

It's heartbreaking, I can't fathom how that poor little boy must have felt in his final moments. He must have been so lonely, hungry, cold. I don't think SS are to blame here, it sounds like they did everything in their power to check on that little boy and his dad. Certainly more than family appear to have done.

The family dynamic will become much clearer in the next few days as people know to them talk to the press. From what we already know it isn't hard to fill in the blanks.

Not Social Services' fault at all. Shame none of the neighbours noticed anything apart from the poor boy saying "Daddy, daddy". Even the poor dog doesn't seem to have behaved in a way that might alert anyone.

Careful not to blame the mum yet. when I tried to raise concerns with SS they weren't in the slightest bit interested. And my ex won't let the children speak to me when they are with him and noone seems to think that is a problem.

Also councils are nearly bankrupt and can't find the funds to have anywhere near enough staff. When people criticise things that happen they need to understand that many people are doing the job of about 5 people.

No one should be blaming anyone until an investigation is completed

It also depends when a visit was due, if he was on a CHIN plan, visits are 4 weekly. Theoretically a SW could have visited on 22nd Dec for a visit and then wasnt due to visit until 4 weeks later in any case.

Well if not SC fault then certainly police at fault. SC reported unanswered visits. Police didn't follow up for 3 days it said on news.
You don't take 3 days to respond to 2 unanswered home visits if a child ( especially one so young so not expected at school or nursery) is under SC.
Just not good enough.

Have you any idea how many unsuccessful home visits there are by social workers, district nurses, health visitors etc etc??

I think the police should have come out yes, but thats because for some reason the social worker called them wanting a welfare check, thats unusual, she was clearly thinking something was wrong

But the police are not going to and cant come out every time someone doesnt answer the door.

The police don't do welfare visits for missed social work visits unless there is a very good reason to think the child is at risk of immediate harm. We request welfare visits fairly often that are turned down. An unanswered child in need visit on its own would NOT be a reason for police to visit. Being open to social care doesn't mean a child is at risk of immediate harm which is the police threshold for visiting/intervention

Daily Mail article says that a 15yo son died 8 years ago, but there's no more info.

If SA were visiting the family every week, that's a good indication that all was not right with the family. Child was classed as 'vulnerable'; haven't seen him called a CIN.

Do you really think they have the resources for that? Blame the government that slashed funding by all means but don't blame the team or individual social workers.
I work in a different field but I know every day I am not doing my job the way I would like to because I am doing the work of about 5 people

I read in the guardian that visits were 4 weekly, which is in line with CiN visiting.

I wasn't going to comment on this thread - there is so much we don't know at this stage.
I used to be a social worker - there, I've said it.......
One of the many reasons I quit, (burnt out, basically), was the tightrope you walk was dealing with issues regarding child abuse/neglect.
Of course, that was my job and I was paid for it, and social workers/social services departments have rightly been castigated so many times for letting children suffer when it was their job to intervene.
But, (and I make no excuses for these failings), there are parents who abuse and neglect their children in ways that are frankly unimaginable. I'm sorry, but they do.
And we have to accept that that will never change unfortunately.
And, so often, absent parents or other relatives come crawling out of the woodwork to blame social services, sometimes rightly/sometimes wrongly - but of course it's easy to do that from afar, isn't it?
I'm not offering any solutions, because I really don't think there are any.

CP visits are fortnightly and CHIN visits are 4 weekly

Its unusual for children to be visited weekly unless there is a specific risk/purpose

BBC news stated he was a CIN. If the mother had lived there recently would SS have asked her to contact dad

So child was CHIN sounds like it then, if that is true about the visit frequency

Parents do not have to work with services under CHIN, its by consent

So a parent not answering, not being in, not engaging under CHIN is not an automatic assumption that something is wrong, they dont have to

This worker clearly felt something was amiss however so did ask for police assistance but it may not have met their threshold for coming out

And as I said, theoretically, if there had been a visit just before christmas, the SW wouldnt have been due until about now anyway for a visit

Just heartbreaking, poor poor baby.

OP - I’m a single parent, as is a good friend of mine. When our kids were very little we used to text each other several times a day. We exchanged phone numbers of our next of kin, and agreed that if either of us didn’t reply to a text for several hours, the other would phone the next of kin to check. It obviously wasn’t foolproof, because it can take a lot less than a few hours for a toddler to die, but it gave us both some peace of mind.

I'm really struggling with this. I've been crying all night. I know that's really self indulgent but I have a 2 year old and it's hit me in a really bad way. I just can't get over how scared and confused that poor soul must have been. It's so unfair. I can only hope he is at peace now.

Maybe some small things will change to make this an impossibility in the future.

I burst into tears when I saw this on the news tonight
That poor poor little boy, too young to know what had happened.
God rest his little soul

Still very early to know much, but it seems like social services did a lot. They went on 2nd, 4th and 9th, making enquiries about other addresses, talking to their managers, contacting police etc. I am not sure if it is standard practice to contact landlords, but it clearly was the right thing to do. I would be asking much more around why no one else noticed the father not being in contact or contactable. So very sad.