And AGAIN, where the hell was the father?!

[PyongyangKipperbang]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8elyx27p56o

Not suggesting he is responsible for their deaths but.....

They lived in squalor, the toilet and bath were both unusable due to being filled with rubbish so they used pots and buckets instead. He knew that the mother left them to go to the local shop and appears to be fine with that, and describes her as a "good mother". WTF?!

Two sets of twins in under two years and where the hell was he? Even in a strong team working marriage that would be a struggle, but a single mother doing it.....

I am not making excuses for her. What she did both before their deaths and in what caused their deaths was inexcusable. But if you knew that your childs other parent was struggling to that extent then you should step up, and if you dont know then you are not involved enough in their lives to know that they are living in filth.

He isnt directly responsible for their deaths but he is surely guilty of neglect?! How the fucking hell has not been charged with that?!

This is local to me. An article I read the other day said they were well presented outside the house.

The grandmother had tried to come in to use the toilet when dropping them off but was told she couldn't.

I would say the sainsburys she went to is about a 10 minute walk from the house.

Have RTFT and asked Mumsnet to delete. I clearly don't have enough information to comment.

Please can we not turn this into a social worker bashing thread. It's not possible to intervene in people's lives as a social worker if they don't consent, unless there is clear evidence of significant harm. Nobody can be sure that any professionals actually knew how bad it was in that house and social workers can only go on the evidence they have. It's frustrating when a parent won't consent to let you see the children or let you in the house but it doesn't mean you can then act against their wishes. To suggest that social workers were negligent for closing the case where they didn't have consent to work is unfair and disparaging.

Well they aren't, and imagine a world where the state was allowed to enter your house with no evidence just on a hunch. Police need a warrant or evidence of immediate harm to enter someone's home and social workers need consent. People always want social workers to have more power when something has gone wrong but they would hate to live in a society where social workers actually had that much power 🤷🏼‍♀️

@Viviennemary exactly because he didn’t live in the house with his four children. He knew how they were living. He should have been there. It would have prevented this. Imo he is as guilty as she is if not more so because he could have intervened. She was clearly struggling and not capable. He should have been the one there seeing this and taking some steps to help his family.

No they aren't, and no standards have not dropped. You know nothing at all about what social workers knew or didn't know about what was happening in that house.

I don't know ow why you have that image in your head.It certainly isn't based on the facts of the case, so i would say it must be because you are a bigot?

Yes a parent can absolutely refuse entry to a social worker. Did you imagine social workers have greater powers than police to enter people's private homes?

There are some parallels with the neglect and subsequent presumed death of Madeleine McCann.Those parents were never prosecuted.Why the difference?

He could apply to court for a court order to spend time with them.

I can’t comment on this particular case but broadly I agree with your original point OP which is that absent fathers (of their choice) should be charged with neglect. I’ve seen it loads on here where mothers are clearly struggling and ask the father to facilitate more contact with the kids and it’s refused. I’ve also seen it where stepmothers post, worried that their husbands original kids need to stay more frequently and they and their DH don’t want them. It doesn’t seem to occur to any of these men that if the mum died, they would have to have 100% custody of the kids or else they would go into care and sadly I suspect a lot of men would allow their kids to go into the care system in this scenario.

I think it does stack up if her mental health declined very rapidly.
I've worked with many people who have needed their children removed from their care - many with such poor mental health that they were unable to parent properly even with support. It's always heartbreaking but necessary for the children's sake but not one of those people didn't love their children.

Social workers cannot remove children just because of missing school. They may have been at the start of the child protection process at this point (I don't know, speculating) but it would have been nowhere near the threshold for removal. They didn't have evidence of the squalid conditions in the home.

Because they were white middle-class professionals, not a black working-class single mother.

And also it was decided under a Portugese court and not a British one so not really comparable? The majority of people are also perplexed at why they were let off and believe they should have been punished.

But even if he came and got them from the house, she might have brought them to the front door so he wouldn't see the mess? In the photo they are presented very well, look clean and in lovely matching jumpers. If you saw them out and about like that, you'd most likely presume they are well looked after.

How the bloody hell did SS sign her off?! 🤬

Yes you can choose whether to accept help. The threshold for intervention without consent is extremely high (in fact it's care proceedings level, not child protection - parents still have to consent to visits on a child protection plan) and if the threshold of evidence is not met then social workers cannot insist on anything.

It's not about prioritising other cases necessarily. It's about thresholds for intervention and lack of consent.

where is the evidence that social workers knew about the toilet being unusable?

Social services should still have been involved. It was clearly neglect. They were just allowed to continue on with their other two babies and no one cared. The friends they were with also left their children alone. Nothing happened to those parents either.

Because she didn't consent to intervention. There is no 'signing off' as if every parent gets a 'good enough' or 'bad parent' stamp at the end of their involvement. They tried to work with her, she declined to consent. They didn't have evidence for immediate action, the situation seems to have escalated very quickly. They may have had more evidence in the near future but it was too late for those boys.

How do you know social services weren't involved?

Because they weren't involved because of safeguarding reasons. They were there to offer support to the mother, but she did not want it. They can't force someone to accept support.